me. I didn’t give a flying shit over the clear, honey-colored eyes that were set into those sockets below heavy, dark eyebrows. I felt nothing good for the man suddenly standing in my office in fitted jeans and an olive-green hoodie that hugged every part of an upper body that hadn’t lost a single pound of muscle since the last time I had seen it.
I wasn’t going to get mad. I wasn’t going to cuss him out or do any other stupid shit. I was going to handle this.
I had promised myself that if this day ever came, I would do what I had to do. With some honor. With some pride.
But that didn’t mean I had to be nice.
And it was because I didn’t feel shit anymore for this specific person—because hating his guts didn’t really count—that I didn’t even raise my eyebrows at his random appearance after seventeen fucking months, even as some part of my brain freaked out at the fact that Peter had literally just told me about him yesterday. Yesterday. The same day I had just read about him not signing his contract.
He was here, in Houston of all places, when he had told me before he’d only been to the United States twice and both times had been for work.
God, I couldn’t believe this fucker actually had the balls to be here.
I took a breath in through my nose and let it right back out. Seventeen months. It has been seventeen months since the last time I’ve seen him, I reminded myself.
I had this.
“Jonah.” I let that sense of I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you flow over my arms and up into my throat, making it easier to say his name. To look at him.
There was nothing he could do that I couldn’t fight. There was nothing he could say that would possibly hurt me. I had prepared for this. I’d warned myself it might happen… one day maybe ten years from now, when, hopefully, I might be hot as hell and living my best life, so I could rub it in his face that I was better than ever. That I hadn’t missed or needed his ass for a second.
This asshole with those honey-colored eyes had the nerve to stand there, watching me, with all those muscles and that face and that green hoodie and those jeans and that closely cropped hair and smoothly shaved jaw, and say, all soft and almost shyly, and in that fucking accent that had been the second thing to catch my attention, “Hi, Lenny.”
Hi, Lenny.
He’d Hi, Lenny-d me.
This fucking long and he was going to go with “Hi, Lenny” like we had seen each other a week ago at the grocery store?
I can do this, I repeated to myself.
If I could have reached my stress ball, I would have, but I couldn’t, at least not without him noticing, and I wasn’t going to give him the gift of seeing me squeezing my ball to keep my shit together in his presence.
This wasn’t about me.
Asshole. Fucking dickface.
I didn’t even look away because fuck that. This was my place, and I hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d been the one who had lied when he’d kissed me seventeen months ago and promised to see me after his match.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked before I could stop myself.
The Asshole stood there, the fingers at his sides wiggling, fidgeting as he watched me. A moment went by, then another with us just staring at each other. Why the hell was he finally here? Why now?
I waited for a response but got nothing. Like always. Why would I expect differently?
All right. He didn’t want to answer my question? He didn’t want to own up to his actions? Fine. This was on him. I wasn’t taking the lead anymore. I had promised myself I wouldn’t. I could play dumb all day long too if that’s what he wanted.
“If you’re looking for Peter, he’s in the building next door,” I told him, keeping all my fingers tucked in and every curse word I knew in my mouth. Acting like it was no big deal he was here. No big deal that he had called Peter.
Goddamn it, I really wish I had my stress ball in my hand.
The Fucker’s forehead scrunched; it was lined from years in the sun. Then that pink mouth formed an expression that wasn’t a smile or a grimace but something in between. The next words that came out of his mouth—in the