His Assistant - Alexa Land Page 0,48
one-sided, since he hadn’t even bothered to fight for me.
Not that I wanted him to.
Did I?
No. Come on. I’d just ended it.
Oh God, I’d actually done it. I’d broken up with him. All of a sudden, I desperately needed some fresh air. I got up and hurried out of the office, and Loco fluttered off the desk and ran after me.
The living room was almost as crowded as the backyard, and some asshole in designer swim trunks exclaimed, “Hey, look at the chicken!”
When he started to reach for her, I growled, “Don’t you fucking dare! She’s not your plaything.” I scooped Loco into my arms for safekeeping before rushing out the front door.
Great. So now I’d bonded with poultry. As if I needed more to miss when this job ended in two weeks and Harper and his household were out of my life.
Chapter 7
Once I was outside, I picked a direction and started walking. It would have been nice if I’d had my SUV, but this would do. I just really needed to get out of that house for a while, and away from the pounding dance music and all those people.
I felt awful, and there was a dull ache in my chest. Had I really just done that? Had I broken up with the person I wanted most in this world?
Part of me felt like I’d made a huge mistake. Harper and I would have had a few more days and nights together if I hadn’t done this today, and they would have been wonderful. I knew that for a fact.
But given how much this hurt after such a short time, I had to believe it was the right call. If I’d let it go on, only to have Harper end it a handful of days or weeks from now, the pain would have been unbearable. It was already almost too much.
I didn’t dare put Loco down because I was sure she’d run off, so I was clutching the skinny chicken to my chest when a black Porsche convertible pulled up beside me a few minutes later. An all too familiar voice asked, “What the hell are you doing, Phoenix?”
I turned to frown at my twin brother. “A better question is, what are you doing here, Dallas?”
“My friend Tony sent me a text to let me know Harper Royce is throwing a house party, so I was on my way to check it out.”
“Great. Well, it’s a total douche-fest, so you’ll feel right at home.”
Dallas actually chuckled at that instead of getting offended. I started walking again in the opposite direction he’d been travelling, and he threw the car in reverse and started rolling along with me. “Okay, serious question,” he said. “Are you okay? Because you look like you just survived a nuclear blast, and now you and your chicken are shell-shocked and wandering the streets.”
“It’s Harper’s chicken. Her name’s Loco.”
“Are you kidnapping it for a ransom?”
“No. I just didn’t want to leave her with the douchebags.” I glanced at him, and after a moment I asked, “Did you buy yourself a convertible the second you arrived in L.A.?”
“I got here late last night, and the Porsche is a lease. It seemed simpler than shipping one of my cars from Nashville, especially since I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I’m about to shoot—”
“A pilot for a TV show. Noah told me. Where is he, anyway?”
“Running errands, and you never answered my question,” he said. “Are you alright?”
“Don’t pretend you care.”
“You think I don’t?”
A harsh laugh slipped from me, and when I paused and turned to look at him, the Porsche came to a stop. “The last time I remember you giving a shit about me was when we were seventeen and you hit me with Dad’s car. Although now that I think about it, you were more concerned about how much trouble you’d be in than anything else.”
“Okay, first of all I grazed you. Don’t make it sound like I used you as a human speed bump. And it was your fault you got hit. You were guiding me into that narrow parking space, and you were supposed to get the hell out of the way before I ran you over.”
“I love how you even make getting run over my fault.”
“It was! The car was going about two miles an hour, and all you had to do was move out of the way. And yeah, I was more worried about getting in trouble, because I knew