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“Are you fucking done?” Yanking her arm from my grip with a scowl, I let my laugh die, but not my grin as Cedar spins back around and snags more towels to hold against Peach’s still leaking nose. “Fucking ridiculous—”
“Meh.” I shrug as I step back to the entrance and find that I somehow managed to stack the food containers in a leaning tower on top of the cash register in my haze of pissed off and didn’t dump them on the floor. “Who’s hungry?”
“Me.” Peach’s exclamation comes out nasally as he shrugs out of Cedar’s reach with a paper towel pinched to his nose and accepts the container I offer.
“Seriously?” Cedar looks between us, a pinched look etched into her pretty face. “You two just … but then you just …?” Her hand wings out, gesturing between Peach and me as her words fail her and she just stares at the two of us. “What the fuck?”
Shrugging, I look over to Peach who already has chopsticks to his full mouth before he can finish settling his ass back into the chair, and bring my lifted brow back to Cedar. “We came to an understanding. Now,” I say and thrust a container in her hands when I want to thrust something else. “Eat.”
The need to pull her aside when all she does is stare at me, smack her ass, and make sure she knows not to let anyone else touch her ever again is hard to resist the longer I hold my arm out with her dinner in my grasp that she refuses to take.
“What is wrong with you?”
Peach snorts at her question. “A lot. You have no idea.”
“Nobody asked you, Red,” I growl.
“It’s literally orange, dipshit.” I can hear the eye roll in his tone more than I see it because my gaze refuses to leave Cedar until she cracks and takes the food. “Orange. Oh-rah-nge.”
Except all she does is scoff and twirl on her platformed heels until she’s facing away from me and snagging cleaning supplies. “You turned my shop into a fucking crime scene!”
I let my arm drop and dump her container back on top of the register, along with mine. “It’s not that bad, sweet.”
“Oh, shut up,” Cedar snaps when I approach her and take a bottle of cleaner to drown out the few blood drops that made their way to the pavement beneath us. She viciously wipes away at the toolbox, clearly convinced the thing is contaminated, until I’m certain I see her scrub off some of the paint. “Guys always think they can just—Ugh.”
“Hey.” With a furrowed brow and a knot in my stomach, I let my fingers brush over Cedar’s bare shoulder where her top leaves the skin exposed.
She jumps.
I grind my teeth.
Dipping out from beneath my hand, she turns farther away from me and starts scrubbing another surface like the secret to all her problems lie just underneath.
Or maybe the cure to her panic.
I shoot a look over to Peach, who pretends not to watch, but I know he sees because he gets the unspoken message written in my ticking jaw and vacates the tent with not much sound.
Turning back to the woman who’s trying to sanitize the damn concrete, I pause.
I never pause.
Fuck, why does my stomach roll with an ache for revenge?
“Cedar,” I bark from my stance only a foot or so away because touching her seems like a terrible idea, even though that’s all I want to do.
She jumps again, and my chest tightens in a vice so gripping, it’s hard to breathe.
Words leave her painted lips, but they’re so quiet I don’t hear what she says.
“Sweetness, c’mon,” I try, softer this time, and gesture despite the fact that she’s still refusing to look at me. “Get off the floor.”
Like a switch is flipped, Cedar hauls up from her crouch, dropping the supplies in her hands, and swings her body in my direction with a snarl marring her once soft features. “Fuck.You.”
Her hands are on me, pushing at my chest, and when I don’t move, her hands ball into fists that smash into the muscle on my pecs.
“Get.Out.”
“No.”
