Not the first time.
Wouldn’t be the last.
I reached over Haruto to grab a salad chopper. Eating during the season was so fucking boring. To my surprise, Haruto handed it to me then moved out of my way instead of ignoring me.
The team mostly talked to me via text message these days.
So fucking awkward.
But not as awkward as the frigid silence when Cole staggered into the kitchen, still wearing his leather jacket over a t-shirt soaked with sweat and blood. His hands were still wrapped in fighting tape, knuckles bloody and raw. A freshbruise bloomed across his cheekbone, and his lip was split. He grabbed two slices of pizza out of the fridge then threw them in the microwave, not quite steady on his feet. Where the fuck had pizza come from in the middle of the fucking season?
Rami followed him into the room, his face furious. “What the fuck, Cole?”
Cole looked over his shoulder, a lazy predator despite his blackening eye. “Could be anything. You might need to give me some more details.”
Blood from his knuckles had soaked through the tape, staining it rust-colored. He’d been at Declan’s again—the second fight he owed for information on Eva’s whereabouts.
Rami flipped his phone around. Cole paled and closed his eyes, swaying slightly on his feet—whether from the fight or drinking, I couldn’t tell—an unusual display of vulnerability before his face hardened again. “And?”
“And what the fuck are you doing with another girl right now?”
Cole’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Why the fuck wouldn’t I be?”
Rami shoved him, and Cole hit the kitchen counter, hard. “Eva just broke up with you, and you’re already attending charity galas with another woman on your arm?”
What the fuck did Rami mean, Cole was with another girl?
Cole set his jaw. “Why shouldn’t I date whoever the fuck I want to?” He swayed again, catching himself on the counter.
Rami scoffed. “The best fucking thing that ever happened to you dumped your ass because you’re a dick. Why the fuck don’t you just apologize for whatever the fuck you did and get her back?”
“Cole,” I rasped, trying to wrap my head around it. “What the fuck does he mean, you were with another girl?”
Was he seeing someone else while he was hooking up with me? My world dropped out from under me as I stared at my best friend, the man I thought loved me as much as I fucking loved him—a man who’d spent the last two nights in my arms.
“My father is going to announce my engagement to Delaney Hartwell in a few weeks,” he said, his voice perfectly flat, not revealing a hint of emotion.
“You’re going to break Eva’s heart,” Haruto breathed. “And you don’t even give a fuck.”
“Why should I?” Cole snapped back. “She’s a liar, and that’s why we broke up with her.”
Haruto’s eyes widened. “You dumped her, not the other way around?”
Oh shit. Oh shit.My mind was still processing my hurt that Cole was engaged, that he hadn’t told me, that?—
“Did you think it was her choice? That a woman like her had gotten her hooks into the heir apparent for Carter Industries, and she’d let go?” A thick layer of pain undercut Cole’s bitterness.
Haruto looked at me, waiting for me to deny it, but I was focused on other things.
“How long have you been engaged?” I asked, silently begging him to tell me it had just happened, that he just hadn’t had time to tell me, that he hadn’t cheated on a woman with me. With Eva.
“Weeks,” he confided, meeting my eyes.
Rage flowed through me, my fists clenched, and I shook with fury and the effort of resisting the impulse to beat the shit out of him for being such an asshole.
“Fuck you,” I barked. “All of that bullshit about Eva lying and—” I cut myself off.
“What the hell did you two do to her?” Rami growled.