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Chloe: I’m not your babe. What?
Jesse: Are you ok?
Chloe: I’m fine.
Jesse: Fine never means fine. What’s wrong, babe?
She didn’t feel like getting into this with him, not over text messages anyway, but she wasn’t going to play this game. Not anymore. She didn’t get the chance to reply to his question because her phone rang with an incoming call.
Linnea.
Chloe: Linn just called me. She’s a little freaked out. Fuckboy left her flowers this time.
Jesse could feel the eyes of his cousin glancing over his shoulder. He didn’t have to look over to know that Kyan saw Chloe’s name on the screen. He braced himself for the interrogation he knew would be coming.
His cousin nudged him. “You trying to get with her?”
“Maybe.” He tried to sound nonchalant so that maybe, if he was lucky, Kyan would drop it and not question him further.
“Who?” Dillon cut in.
“Chloe.” Kyan shrugged.
Jesse silently groaned. Any hope of that was now dashed.
“Really? Chloe?” Dillon’s eyes widened, as if he were flabbergasted, and it kind of pissed him off. “What happened to Taylor?”
“Nothing happened.” He shook his head at his cousins and shrugged. He didn’t owe them any explanation but gave it to them anyway. “Tay and I aren’t exclusive. We can be with anyone we want to.”
Kyan raised an eyebrow.
“Oh.” There was a long pause before Dillon spoke again. “And you want to…with her?”
Jesse hesitated. He did want to be with her. Very much. He also didn’t want to get hurt. Or hurt her. “I think I do.”
He knew what was coming.
“Does Chloe know about you?” Kyan clarified, “About you and Tay?”
And there it was.
His reply was abrupt yet soft-spoken. “No.”
Dillon placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you think you should be honest and tell her?”
Fuck.
Jesse cursed himself that he let Kyan see him texting Chloe. He had wanted to keep this thing that wasn’t anything yet, and might not ever be anything, private for now. “Of course, and if it ever comes to anything, then I will.”
He was only kidding himself. This thing with Chloe was already a thing and if he didn’t do something about it soon he was going to lose her before he ever had the chance to find out if they could have something together. Something real. He knew she was frustrated with him, with the mixed signals he sent. She hadn’t even bothered to answer his last text.
Kyan grinned when the text alert sounded on Jesse’s phone. Jesse looked at it and quietly sighed in relief when he saw it was from Chloe. His brow knitted as he read the message on the screen.
He looked up. “Linn just called Chloe and she’s a little freaked out. Fuckboy left her flowers this time.”
Jesse watched the grin disappear from Kyan’s face. Then he disappeared altogether.
Jesse followed Dillon through the red service door that connected Charley’s kitchen to the club next door. Brendan Murray, the eldest of the Byrne cousins, was waiting for them with Salena right beside him in their usual spot—the semicircular booth of deep-plum velvet closest to the bar.
