IknewI’d met him before.
Letting his hand drop back to his thigh, he says, “Me?”
“Yes, you!” I lift a hand to point in his direction, as if we weren’t the only two people here. “You thief!”
“I’m sorry?” he says, face half-amused, half-confused. That bastard. He doesn’t even have the decency to remember me.
“Rome, seven years ago? You and your group of dumbasses spent the night with me and my friends, only to steal from us and skitter away? Ring any bells?”
I never could’ve forgotten that night, or that name, no matter how many years passed. I’d been having a rare night out with the girls on my team during a three-day competition abroad. Our coaches expected us to stay in because we had an early start the next morning, but Lacey, our team’s balance beam specialist, convinced a few of us to enjoy the city for the night. At one of the bars we went to, we met this group of guys with whom we spent the night, and when we went to the bathroom and stupidly left our purses at the table, they stole all the euros we had and proceeded to escape in the taxi we’d called for ourselves. We ended up having to walk back to the hotel, and by the time we showed up, one of our coaches had been alerted of our escape and made our lives at practice a living hell for the following six months.
Nothing like gymnastics to make a group of grown women feel like children.
But that’s beside the point. All this happened because of him. The guy with the blood-drained face standing in front of me.
“Oh, I…” He blinks. “I’m—”
“An idiot? A criminal? A shithead?” I could go on and on. I don’t think there exists a limit to the number of names I could find to describe him.
“I’m sorry,” he corrects. “We were young. And dumb, clearly.” He scratches the back of his head. “Never thought I’d see you again.”
“So that makes it okay?” I say, fuming from the inside. And to think I’d been having a good time with him that night. That I’d felt a little flutter of something in my chest while we’d been talking. Really,Iwas the dumbass.
“No, of course, not, I—”
“Wait.” Another thing comes back to me from that night. The guy I’d been talking to all night had an English accent. He was dressed in a nice dress shirt and slacks, just like his friends, who’d all said they were from Manchester. “What happened to the accent?”
He winces, then rubs the back of his head again. “It’s something we did for fun, back then.” His eyes drift to the ground when he says, “Fake lives for the night.”
I roll my eyes. Of course. What else did I expect? That anything he’d said to me that night, save for his name, had been true? “A creep, a thief,anda liar,” I count on my fingers. “This just keeps getting better.”
“I thought we’d cleared the creep part,” he says, at least having the decency to look sheepish.
“Well, guess what? I changed my mind.” My shoulders are tight as a drawstring, and it gets worse the longer I stare at him. “I actually kind of want to punch you in the face a whole lot right now, and I’m not in the mood to get arrested, so I think I’ll just walk away and hope for your sake you make sure I never see you again.” With one last glare at his slack jaw, I say, “Goodnight, creep.” Then, without skipping a beat, I climb the stairs and slam the door behind me.
I make sure it’s locked this time.
Chapter 2
Finn
Aaronanswersonthesecond ring when I finally find the time to call him the next day. That prick had better.
“Hey, what’s up?” the man I’ve considered my best friend ever since I can remember says, his tone too unbothered for my liking.
“Oh, not much,” I answer as I pace in front of the Sonder Hill Gymnastics Center, the pavement under my feet darkened from the recent bout of rain. The air is still chilly, dampness going straight through my windbreaker. “Except for the part where I might get arrested for voyeurism, but other than that…”
“You what?” Something rustles in the background, like bedsheets or clothes, accompanied by a soft whine, likely from one of his and his wife’s two dogs. “Finn, what the hell did you do?”
“What the hell didyoudo, you mean. Renting the cabin without telling me? Didn’t want to give me a heads-up so I wouldn’t walk in on a naked girl thinking it was that damn Cameron bastard again?”
The moment I saw those lights turned on in there all the way from my office window, I almost went batshit. The memory of the last time someone unexpected had been in there was still too fresh in my mind, and the last thing I wanted was a repeat of that night. Although now that I know what happened next, I think I’d rather have taken my chances on a second fight with Cameron.
“Ah, shit, man. Totally slipped my mind. Was trying to help you with the workload one night, but then Wren came home and—”
“Yep, I don’t think I need to hear the rest of that.”
Aaron chuckles.
