“I just do.”
“You give me personality whiplash, you know that?”
One corner of my mouth tilted up without intention, and I pushed both hands into the pockets of my shorts and exhaled heavily. “Sorry about that.”
“Are you? Or do you just like to play mind games with women you barely know?”
“Mind games?”
“You blow hot and cold more than the weather back home, Henry.”
Henry. That’s better.
But even though I had a lot to say to her in response to that, I didn’t get the chance. Before I could open my mouth to speak, that gorgeous little growl of hers erupted, and she threw her hands up in the air. “You know what? I’m not doing this. I prefer to be around people who don’t make me feel like I have to walk on eggshells all the time and whose mood swings don’t give me a neck injury. So, to quote your very own words, Henry Cohen,you’re the last thing I want right now, and the very last thing I’d ever need. See you around. Or not, hopefully.”
I knew I’d fucked up saying that to her.
This time, she walked away without looking back, telling Bailey and Rhea she needed a bathroom break as she breezed past them. Not that either one paid her much attention when they waved her off, which made my blood boil. They were too wrapped up in my dickhead mates’ attention to look after their supposed friend in a foreign country.
“Guess I’ll go make sure she’s all right, then. Not like she’s wandering around all alone, half-dressed in a foreign country full of greasy men or anything,” I muttered to myself as I strode past the four of them, following Phoebe as closely as possibleto make sure she stayed safe without it being obvious that I’d somehow turned into a lust-driven stalker who couldn’t simply leave shit alone anymore.
Joe Goldberg, eat your heart out.
I shouldn’t have given a single damn about some stranger I’d only just met. Especially not after everything I’d left behind back home. Especially not considering who it had involved and how my life had literally crumbled apart, and this holiday was supposed to be about me patching that back together.
I had too much at risk.
“Cohen, hey. Where you headed?”
I looked over my shoulder to find Jace standing there with a confused expression on his face.
I spun around to face him, running a hand through my hair and blowing out a breath. “What?”
Jace glanced past me in the direction Phoebe had gone, and I saw him connect more dots than I thought him capable of before he looked back at me with a knowing smirk in place. “Ah, shit. Her? Really?”
“Who?”
“Little blondie over at the bar.”
“The bar?” I swung around to look behind me, finding that blonde halo of hair propped up against the bar andnotheading in the direction of the bathroom like she’d told the others. “Goddammit.” I growled, running a hand down my face as I turned back to face Jace. “She’s a living nightmare.”
“Phoebe?”
“Who else?”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
Jace raised a brow and waited.
“I just find it gross that her mates are so wrapped up in you two idiots, they leave her to wander around a bar like this on her own. So much for girl code and all that.”
“She’s literally twenty feet away from them, Cohen.”
“A lot of creeps can be packed into twenty feet, Jace.”
“Yeah, and you may be the biggest one of all following her around like this.” His expression slowly changed from curious to amused. “You actually like her, don’t you?”
