Page 40 of All for Love

“How did the first date go?”

Unless I was imagining things, that twist of her lips was distaste. Disgust. But then she shrugged. “We went bowling. It wasn’t great. Ben kept telling me I was doing it wrong and using that as an excuse to hold my hips and cop a feel of my ass.” She rolled her eyes. “So predictable.”

All sorts of dark and thundery things happened inside me. I stared back at her, my eyes narrowing as I lost control of my heartbeat. “If he was so predictable and it wasn’t great, then why are you going on another date with him? You can’t be that desperate.”

I was lashing out a bit and I knew it, slipping back into my douchebag ways, but I couldn’t help it. Mercedes was hot as hell, wearing a blue knit dress today with a cute, flowery scarf wrapped around her neck and dark charcoal under her eyes.

She was smart, beautiful, and the stepdaughter of a billionaire. Why she would be dating a guy who had to use excuses to touch her was beyond me. I mean, be a fucking man and touch her if she wants you to, but then do it properly. And if she doesn’t fucking want you to, then you stay the hell away. It’s called respect, man.

“I’m not desperate,” she said coolly. “I don’t need to justify myself to you, Kody. This has nothing to do with you.”

“The hell it doesn’t,” I snapped, feeling an angry dragon rearing up inside. “Everything you do has something to do with me.”

Her eyebrows raised slowly, her stare defiant as she scoffed. “We’re not in high school. This is a big city and no one is ever going to know or care who I’m seeing. Sure, there’s some office gossip, but that hardly means anything. Don’t act like I’m under a microscope just because we’re technically family now.”

“I’m not acting. You may not be some new A-lister who’s acted in the summer’s hottest blockbuster, but there are a lot of people who will be watching you from now on. That’s what happens when your mother marries a man like my dad. You become a person of interest by association.”

“You certainly don’t act like anyone is watching you,” she retorted. “What you’re doing right now is hypocritical and unbecoming. You can sleep with the entire city and I can’t go on one date?”

Exasperation tightened the pit of my stomach. “I’m not a hypocrite, Mercedes. All I’m saying is that you need to be careful who you’re seen with. If your last date wasn’t great, why even risk it?”

“I’m not risking anything,” she snapped, her own exasperation dripping from her voice. “Since you seem to have missed it the first time, this has nothing to do with you. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“No.”

“Well, then you can leave now. I’m going on another date with him whether you approve or not, and that’s really the end of this conversation.”

I didn’t like this. Not one bit, but she did have a point. It didn’t have much to do with me and I wasn’t in any position to judge. Plus, it wasn’t like I could stop her.

I really didn’t get why she would’ve agreed to a second date with a guy when she clearly hadn’t enjoyed the first one, but that was her choice and she’d made it. Somewhere between my guts and rectum, I knew that this wasn’t about any of that anyway.

This was about jealousy. I would never admit it out loud, but that same jealousy I’d felt earlier was still there, coating my insides with acidic green slime.

Shoving the emotion further down toward my rectum, I rolled my eyes and got up. “Fine. Go for it. Have fun with the perv.”

It struck me that she didn’t object to me calling him that, and I was curious but I didn’t ask. Instead, I strode to the door and briefly looked back at her over my shoulder once I reached it. “Maybe if you really hit it off with him, you can bring him to Thanksgiving on Thursday.”

With a double-tap of my knuckles against the doorframe, I left her behind to contemplate her choices and mentally tried to line up my own. I hadn’t realized it before, but I was stuck in a rut. I hadn’t been with anyone else since the first time I’d hooked up with her, and even though I really just wasn’t interested right now, maybe it was time to go on a date myself.

Tedious and boring as it was to get to know a woman before I slept with her, maybe it was time to try.