Page 28 of Breaking All The Rules

My mom shook her head and covered her face with her hands before looking at me.

“Ethan, Ethan, Ethan,” she chided. “What am I going to do with you?”

I shrugged and felt myself smiling along with her as she let out a soft, light-hearted laugh.

“I don’t know.” I chuckled, enjoying the fact that she didn’t berate me for something I had done. Maybe she knew I had done enough of that myself and wanted to spare me this time.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. So, you got yourself into a bad situation at work—you know what you do when that happens?”

“Grab some peanut butter and make s’mores?” I suggested, grinning at the memories of my grandma.

“It works every time.” Her face lit up with happiness and I knew that she was having the same happy memories as me.

“But seriously,” she continued. “You’re a smart guy and you have an amazing legal team at work. I don’t doubt that you’ll find a way to work through this lawsuit. Own up to the mistakes you’ve made and learn from them. But at the end of the day, you’re still not your dad. I would never judge you for the choices you make as a single man, Ethan. But I think that you owe it to yourself to stop and think about what you want from life and whether that includes someone special.”

I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. If only solving this problem was as easy as she made it sound.

Sixteen

Eva

“Hey, Brit,” I grumbled as I stepped to the side, watching my step as I tried to avoid getting my heel caught in the crack between the uneven sidewalks outside of my apartment. This morning was already starting rough, and it definitely acted like the Monday that it was. “How was Miami?” I asked once I avoided the disaster and made my way toward the subway. I was already running late and prayed that there wouldn’t be any further delays this morning.

“Miami was wonderful,” she cooed, making me jealous that I hadn’t been on a vacation in so long that I would probably need to pick up a copy of a how-to guide before attempting to take one. “But I feel terrible that everything apparently fell apart while I was gone.”

Her tone changed, and I knew that she had already heard the gossip from Gabi.

“When did Gabi call?” I asked, my features scrunching on my face. She waited a minute before answering, and I knew that she was stalling so she didn’t have to admit that they had already talked. While Brittany had been my best friend for as long as I could remember, she was also one of the biggest gossipers that I knew, aside from my sister. It just made sense that they would latch onto each other once they knew.

“Brit,” I coaxed as I slid past a lost couple holding up a map of Manhattan while blocking the sidewalk.

“We talked this morning. And I have to say, I’m kinda hurt that you didn’t call me yourself to tell me that you were so sick that your incredibly sexy boss—whom you’ve already fucked, I might add, had to come to take care of you.”

“I didn’t call you because I didn’t want to ruin your trip by having you worried about me when there was nothing that you could do from Miami.”

“You’re still avoiding the part about your totally fuckable boss,” she taunted. “You know, the one that you had sex with in the FILE ROOM AT YOUR WORK.”

I considered pulling the phone away from my ear as her voice boomed through it but decided against it to spare those walking close by from having to hear about my sex life.

“I’m gonna kill Gabi,” I muttered into the phone, instantly regretting telling my sisters about what had happened. I should have known that it would get back to Brittany before I could even talk to her.

“Well, you can fill me in on all of the juicy details later,” she said cheerfully. “I was really just calling to see how you were doing this morning... you know, with the whole Jeremy thing.”

I stopped in my tracks and froze. What the hell was she talking about?

“WhatJeremy thing?” I asked, moving to the side so people could get past me.

The phone was so quiet that I pulled it away from my ear and checked to make sure the call hadn’t been disconnected.

“Brit, what Jeremy thing are you talking about?” I snarled, his name instantly making my blood boil.

“Shit. I thought she had already told you.”

“Who had already told me what?”

My foot tapped anxiously on the cement as I waited while the blood pulsed in my ears as my blood pressure skyrocketed.

“Gabi was supposed to call you to tell you that Lance hired an attorney.”

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