Page 40

“Who the hell are you?” I yelled, clutching the floral fabric to my chest.

A stranger wearing my cousin’s fluffy pink robe stood by the vanity, wagging his pierced brows at me. He looked like he was auditioning for the role of loser boyfriend in a band that practiced in his parents’ garage, with his mop of messy box-dyed hair that hung into coal-rimmed brown eyes.

It wasn’t that he was ugly, but he had bad idea written all over his tattooed-covered skin.

“Who the fuck are you?” I yelled at him again. He didn’t even bat an eye at my outburst. Like being yelled at by women cowering behind a shower curtain was an everyday occurrence for him.

Maybe it was.

“Viper, I told you my cousin was taking a shower, and you’d have to wait.”

My eyes shot to Gracie so quickly I thought they might literally fly out of my head. Viper? I mouthed to her, but all she gave me was a shrug. I cleared my throat. Maybe my next question would knock some sense into her. “You let a man named after a snake into our home?”

Her lips thinned, and I knew right away that it was the wrong thing to say. Gracie didn’t take criticism of her romantic interests in her life well. To a degree, I understood it. In our family, the women were always under heavy scrutiny from our fathers and brothers; hell, any male in our life seemed to get a say on what we should or shouldn’t do.

It was one of the few aspects of my culture I resented—the machismo.

I suspected her choice of men was a rebellion in the same way that my lack of a choice in men was. Both were a pushback on the cultural normative we’d been raised with, and normally I didn’t give a shit who she chose to be with.

But none of the others had barged in on me when I was naked.

“My house, Ariella,” she bit back with enough venom that she should have had the name Viper.

I lowered my eyes in a show of apology. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” My gaze snagged on the guy still casually standing in the bathroom. “But I’m sure you can see how I’d be a little bit creeped out that there’s a grown-ass man in the bathroom with me while I’m naked.”

“He was supposed to wait until you were done,” she said, frowning.

“Hadda piss, baby.”

God, gag me.

There was no way this guy held doors open for Gracie. He probably made her pay for his meal.

I wanted to vomit at the thought of him peeing while I was less than two feet away. Ew. And he wore her robe while doing that, too.

“Okay, well, now that you’re done, do you mind? I need to get dressed,” I asked, desperately wanting to be wearing some clothes.

“Naw.” He leaned back against the little blue cabinet, spreading his legs apart wide enough for me to see that he wasn’t wearing pants—or shorts.

I hoped to god he wore boxers at least.

“I meant leaving, pendejo. Do you mind leaving?” I hoped the look I gave my cousin sufficiently communicated how much of a piece of shit her current hook-up was. The pink coloring on the tops of her cheeks left me hopeful that it had.

“Come on, Viper.” She pulled him out of the bathroom by the upper arm, not looking back.

When I walked out into the main portion of the apartment, Graciella was lounging on her bed—alone.

“Where’s bargain store Andy Biersack?” I asked, opening up the fridge to grab a water. She flipped me off, not bothering to look up from her phone.

“He had to get to rehearsal.”

I snorted at how right I’d been with my original assessment of him, which earned me her full attention.

“I’m sorry we can’t all be dating a hot star hockey player. A hot, loaded hockey player at that.” She smirked at me, and any worries I had about her still being pissed went out the window.

I plopped onto her apple-green striped duvet, laying on my side, head propped up on my hand. “Fake dating,” I corrected.

“For now, but watch, you two are going to fall madly in love.”