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"Selfish? He’s not selfish," she protested. I rolled my eyes.
"Yeah, he is," I replied. "He’s making it all about him. Dragging his personal shit out in public when he should just keep it under wraps. He knows what he’s doing."
"Avda, why are you being such an asshole about this?" she demanded bluntly. I glared at her. I felt like I was about to expose myself, one wrong move, and she would figure out what was really going on inside my head.
"He doesn’t need to drag you into his shit," I snapped back. "He needs to keep it to himself. Get on with his fucking life without trying to get you to validate him."
"That’s not what he was doing-"
"I know guys like Sasha, trust me," I replied. "He’s playing you."
"And what would happen if he talked to me about that work?" she asked, cocking her head at me. "What do you think he was trying to get out of me?"
"Oh, I’m sure he’ll make that clear soon enough," I replied. I finished up the last one of the wine and cast the glass aside on the counter. She stared at me.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"Home," I shot back, grabbing my jacket from the back of the chair where I had left it. All this cozy, comfortable safeness I’d felt earlier in the night, all of that had just vanished off the face of the Earth, and I hated it. Talking about this with her, talking about that kind of shit, I knew it was edging way, way too close to the possibility of her figuring out something about me I didn’t want her to.
I pulled on my coat and headed for the door, and she tried to follow me.
"Avda, I don’t know why you’re freaking out about this-"
"I’m not freaking out about it," I shot back at her sharply. "I’m just not interested in listening to how Sasha fooled you with his-"
"Don’t talk about him like that," she told me, a protective edge to her voice. I stared down at her for a long moment. Oh, so that was how she felt about Sasha, was it? She was willing to go to mat for him like that?
"Don’t worry," I told her. "You don’t have to defend him to me any longer."
And, with that, I stalked out of the door, closing it behind me and making my way down the stairs to the car waiting outside. Shit. These comfortable little evenings with her and Kyra, I could tell I had just brought them to an abrupt end.
But there was no way I could let her talk to me about Sasha like that, talk to me about his desire for men – not when I was trying my best to keep my own under wraps. And, fuck, it had to be Sasha, of course, it did, the guy who drove me completely fucking crazy. It could have been anyone in the world, but it had to be him, with his dark eyes and his cocky grin and...
I made it back to the car and pulled the door shut behind me, gripping the wheel so tight it looked as though my knuckles were going to bust through my skin. Why was it that he could be honest about that, and she accepted him, but when I even thought about spilling that part of myself...
I felt as though I needed to crawl into a hole and stay there forever. But one thing I knew for sure was that I had to put as much distance between myself and Jo and that conversation as I could. I had already risked too much, let too much slide, and I wasn’t going to allow myself to get any further drawn into this mess.
I pulled the car away from the apartment building, and watched in the rearview mirror as it vanished into the distance. Some part of me wanted to turn around and ask Jo, straight-up, if she was being honest about the way she felt – if she really believed that someone could be attracted to men as well as women, and it wouldn’t be a problem.
But that would have been too close to the truth for me. And I wasn’t going to let myself get caught up in anything I couldn’t take back. No, as far as I was concerned, I was well and truly done here – and I wasn’t going to let anything else get in the way of my escape.
I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead, gripping the wheel tight, and told myself that I would feel better in the morning.
Even if I didn’t entirely believe it.
Chapter Thirteen – Sasha
I watched from the other side of the club, as that guy circled around the bar and tried to catch Jo’s attention once more. My hands curled into fists at my sides – shit, he was really, really, starting to piss me off.
Ever since the conversation I’d had with Jo the other day, I’d felt even more protective of her than I had before, and seeing this guy try to force himself into her line of sight at every opportunity was getting under my skin. Especially since Jo couldn’t have been making it more clear that she wanted him gone. It was the same guy from the other night – I wasn’t even sure how he had managed to get in, given that I had told the guys on the door to keep an eye out for him, but here he was, prowling for Jo’s attention once more, and I could see how much it was getting to her.
I had been busy handling a few other issues throughout the night, but now, she was the only thing I could pay attention to, and I would be damned if I just stood back and let this guy run the show. He hadn’t done anything wrong exactly, not yet, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t intend to – I could see it written all over his face, how much he wanted to close the distance between himself and Jo, and she was doing her best to duck his attention as she tried to keep on top of her work for the night.
It was busy at the Flood that evening, packed out with people, but she was the only one I could pay any attention to. After how kind she had been to me about our conversation the other day, I felt as though I owed her my care and protection; I was hyper-attuned to everything that was going on with her, and I didn’t want her to think that I was going to turn my back on her and leave her to deal with this all alone.
I pushed my way over to the bar, but, by the time I got there, the guy who had been giving her hassle had already backed off. Jo grimaced at me, as though she already knew what I was doing here.
"You okay?" I asked her, and she nodded.
