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“Well shit, Harper. You need to show me.”
“I… Okay. I will.”
My answer came entirely without thinking. Pitfalls? Consequences? Why worry about those insignificant little annoyances, when I could just say whatever the hell I wanted?
“There’s a diner up the block,” said Preston. “It generally sucks, but how bad could they fuck up some eggs?”
“Are you asking me to breakfast?”
He laughed. “What do you think?”
Breakfast. With Preston.
My stomach rumbled noisily.
“I think I’m one hot shower and about forty-five minutes of coding behind on my day already,” I told him gently. “But… raincheck?”
Grinning smugly, he unlocked his phone and handed it over to me. This time I put in my proper info.
“I really do want to show you my work, by the way,” I told him.
Together we stepped from his bedroom. Preston began stuffing the washing machine, while I stared at a door at the end of the hall.
“Is that…”
“Jax?” Preston nodded. “Yeah, he’s gonna sleep until three in the afternoon.”
Maybe even later, I thought naughtily.
“I really should kick his door in and dump him out of bed,” said Preston.
“You should,” I agreed wholeheartedly. “The asshole deserves it.”
Preston added soap, turned the dial, and the wash cycle kicked in. As the machine began rolling noisily, he looked at me and grinned.
“Don’t worry too much about it,” he said with a wink. “We’ll get him back.”
~ 14 ~
HARPER
There wasn’t a hot enough shower in the world to wash away the fact I’d slept with Jackson Ripley, so I didn’t even try. I needed a DeLorean, or a time machine, or that flashy pen thing they used to memory-wipe people in Men in Black. But since I had access to none of those things — at least not at this point in my life — all I could do was promise myself to never, ever think about it again.
But first, I thought about it. A lot.
Fuck.
I’d obviously gone down to that apartment because I felt slighted by Adrian, but there was more to it than that. For one, I was lonely as I’d ever been. Turns out sealing yourself in your house and shunning the rest of society to write code tended to put a huge dent in your social life.
But there were other reasons I stopped downstairs too, and some were deeper and darker than I liked to admit. There was a good chance I’d kissed Jax just to make Adrian jealous. That was bad enough, but there was also a chance I’d kissed him because I wanted to. Maybe I hadn’t intended upon ending the night on my hands and knees, getting my hair pulled back as I left scratch marks on poor Preston’s headboard. But I hadn’t exactly stopped that situation from happening, either.
And then of course, there was Preston. I hadn’t yet processed how I felt about him being cycled back into my life, but those warm brown eyes and that authentic smile had me questioning my previous decision to cut him out. Besides, it seemed like he could really help me. And didn’t I just agree to have breakfast with him?
All these things tumbled randomly through my mind, throughout the day, as I went back to work debugging the feedback subroutine that had so rudely shocked me. I gained a little ground, and tweaked a few function calls. Some time after lunch I dropped into my couch for an episode of Columbo, but after an unanticipated cat nap I realized I’d have to watch the whole episode over again.
Finally, sometime after five, I headed over to Adrian’s place. He had some kind of work meeting lined up for tonight, and wouldn’t need me that long, so I didn’t even bring my laptop. Already I was looking forward to seeing Brayden’s smiling face again. Adrian, too, I begrudgingly admitted.
The walk to the car was bone-chillingly cold. I spent five miserable minutes shivering in the front seat, waiting for the defrost to kick in. Each winter I kept reminding myself to invest in an automatic starter. My bank account kept reminding me to fuck off.
