luck with his new girlfriend, biting my tongue against telling him that he was likely going to end up with his heart broken, and then I would have saluted him on the way out the door and made a silent bet with myself as to when he’d walk back through it after he and his precious Ella broke up.
But the me who existed now had been slowly waking up over the past few months and realizing that everything around me was changing.
Except for me.
My best friend was getting married. My party friends were all settling down into relationships. The few single buddies I still had were dispersing, either moving to different cities or slipping into varying levels of alcoholism that I did not find cute or appealing. All my previous friends with benefits were locking themselves down, losing my number, politely asking me to take them off my for a good time call list.
And then, there was me.
Belle Monroe.
President of the Single Forever Club, and newly removed from my position of Hot Doctor Jordan’s Favorite Fuck Buddy.
“I guess you just couldn’t help yourself,” I commented after a moment, meeting his gaze. “Had to get in one last round before you locked yourself down, huh?”
Jordan’s neck turned red, and he cleared his throat, looking away from me ashamed. The motherfucker had called me at almost midnight last night. And normally, I wouldn’t care.
But normally, he wouldn’t be dumping me the very next morning before I even had the chance to make a cup of espresso.
I made a mental note, jotting this down as just another prime example of why the three-date rule is essential.
Jordan stood, grabbing his white coat off the arm of the couch. “I am sorry, Belle. You know I care about you.”
I held up a hand, cutting him off before he could say another word. “Don’t.”
“Why does it make you so uncomfortable to hear that? We’ve been…” He paused, waving a hand between us. “Doing whatever this is for over a year now.”
“This was a fun arrangement, one that mutually benefitted both parties.”
Jordan heaved a sigh at that, looking out my floor-to-ceiling windows at the Chicago skyline being dusted with the morning sun. “Well, I guess it shouldn’t hurt too bad to lose me, then.”
My cold heart defrosted a bit at his words, and I met his disappointed gaze like a dog with her tail between her legs.
But I didn’t have anything to say.
I’d shut out the possibility of anything resembling love a long, long time ago. Love, I’d learned, was a trap. It was a glitter-covered black hole that would swallow you up and spit you out and leave you shipwrecked and alone time and time again. The only way to avoid that kind of heartache was to not participate at all, to cut all strings before emotions had the chance to form.
That was how you kept yourself safe.
And no one could change my mind about that — not even hot, sensitive, caring Doctor Jordan.
Jordan watched me for a long moment, waiting, like he wondered if his words had struck some chord with me. He watched me like maybe this was the day I would confess all my feelings.
But I just sat silent.
Resignation found his features, and he nodded, something of a smirk on his lips as he leaned down long enough to press them to my forehead. “Goodbye, Belle,” he whispered.
And when he was gone, I threw a pillow — a throw pillow, funny enough — at the door he’d walked through.
A growl ripped from my throat, and I ran my hands back through my long, strawberry blonde locks, tucking them behind my ears and grasping the back of my neck. I let my eyes close and attempted the stupid breathing technique Gemma had taught me for work-related stress situations, but after about sixty seconds, my annoyance grew to an unavoidable boiling point.
I jumped up from the couch, not even bothering to get dressed before I was in the elevator and on the way down to Gemma’s.
Gemma was my best friend in the world, my life-keeper both at work and outside of it, too. Our mutual hate for algebra had brought us together in high school, and the mountains of shit we’d had to climb over together had bonded us for life. We’d been through more hell together than most married couples, including the death of her asshole cheating husband, and the metaphorical death of the man I always thought would be my husband — but