Page 25 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight

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I mean…I know why one of my MMCs might be here, might have heat sliding through his emerald-green eyes.

But it doesn’t make sense.

I’m me.

He’s him.

And…maybe something that makes me feel even worse than the fact that I’m me and he’s him is?—

“Aren’t you with someone?” I ask quietly.

He withdraws his hand and the loss of that contact, that closeness is…

Well, I don’t want to think about why it hurts.

“No.”

Okay, so the ex is the ex.

Something unfurls in me…at least until I remember what I saw in the kitchen just yesterday.

“A woman then?”

Something else crosses his face—and it’s not heat. “No,” he says. “I don’t have a woman.”

“Right,” I mutter, that piling on, adding to the wealth of shittiness currently swirling around my insides, setting the lid I’d slapped on it earlier rattling, threatening to bounce itself free, to allow those emotions loose again.

“What?” he asks, and I don’t miss he’s looked away from me, his gaze dropping to his lap.

There’s all the proof I need.

He’s lying.

He has a woman in his life and yet, he’s here with me.

What. A. Jerk.

And I know I should focus on keeping that lid secured, on keeping myself together.

Especially when he’s asking dangerous questions and I’m close to the edge, close to losing it in front of this man who is him.

While I’m me.

But I don’t.

Because instead, when he orders, “Tell me, Red,” the fire inside me bursts free.

That tone.

Him presuming to order me around?—

The lid flies free.

Hits the floor with an ear-shattering clang.

“I saw you!” I snap. “You were with that woman in your kitchen just last night! And now you’re sitting beside me, making no sense and you’re touching me and calling me baby and looking at me with heat in your eyes like she didn’t exist.”

I know what it’s like to feel that way.

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