Page 109 of Lease to Love

I closed her door.

Before I got in the driver’s seat, I pulled out my phone. Erik picked up on the second ring.

"Please tell me you're calling to say you proposed before she realized you’re an emotionally constipated—"

"Summer’s ex.” I interrupted him, needing him to focus. “Find out the name of the building he films in. Find out who owns it.” I kept my voice flat, unbothered, already three moves past the conversation Erik thought we were having. "And get me the name of the owner of the moving company he works for. I’m burying this nigga."

A pause. "That's all oddly specific and dramatic for a man who claims he doesn't care about internet nonsense."

"I don't care about internet nonsense."

I cared about Summer.

I could hear Erik’s grin. "Uh-huh."

"Just get me the information, E."

I hung up before he could ask why, because I didn't have an answer I felt like giving out loud yet.

I just knew that men like Ayo built their whole existence on borrowed foundations, and I happened to be a man who understood exactly how those foundations worked.

Summer was watching me when I finally got in the car.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," I said as I pushed to start the car. "Just cleaning something up."

She didn't push, but still looked skeptical.

So I changed the subject.

“Put your seatbelt on,” I said, smirking as I got ready to pull off. “We’re going to my place.”

Chapter Fourteen

Summer

He was taking me to his house.

That fact had been bouncing around my head ever since we left The Wharf, mostly because I had absolutely no idea what that meant. Roman had just publicly eviscerated my punk-ass ex in front of God, the entire internet, and approximately half the people within a three-block radius, and now he was taking me home with him.

To his house.

Which meant, naturally, that my imagination had immediately gone off the rails.

Maybe he lived in a penthouse somewhere in Dupont Circle. Maybe Georgetown, in one of those beautiful old townhouses with a little courtyard and a door so heavy it probably required a blood oath to open.

Hell, Roman had enough money to own one of those mansions in Chevy Chase with twelve bedrooms, three kitchens, and a library nobody used because rich people apparently enjoyed paying taxes on rooms they never entered.

So when he turned onto my block, I frowned, confused.

When he kept driving, I frowned harder.

When he pulled up in front of a handsome but completely ordinary brick row house in Langston Park, I stared at him. Then I stared at the house. Then back at him.

"Where are we?"

Roman looked at me like I'd asked him where the sky was. "My house."