Chapter 40
JONAH
An hour after the awards ceremony, at eight p.m., I sat in my office, staring at my computer screen. I wasn’t even slightly unsettled or restless, despite Lexi and our ongoing fight.
The image of her walking away from the conference room? It didn’t affect me one bit.
Thank goodness she’d walked away. I could enjoy the rest of my evening without her presence gnawing at me.
Lexi made me all twisted up inside. Why couldn’t it be easy with her? It was supposed to be just sex. Nothing more. But before I knew it, we had moved on to something more than just sex. In the past few weeks, she’d unraveled me and my personal life like no one had before.
I hated it.
Why did it matter that Jill and I had been fuck buddies in the past? Did I want to revisit things with Jill again? Heck, no.
But now that I’d met Lexi and Evie, I knew I was getting too close.
I was getting personal, and I never let myself get personal with anyone I slept with.
Jill knew that. If I revisited things with her, she wouldn’t pry into my personal life like Lexi did.
She wouldn’t ask me about other women I’d slept with in the past … or might in the future.
And yet, Lexi didn’t trust me. She didn’t trust that I could be around Jill without crossing some imaginary line.
I wasn’t the guy who would let a past fling mean more in the present. And I certainly wasn’t the guy who would betray the fragile connection I had begun to build with her.
A damn connection.
I closed my eyes briefly, realizing that her words had stung precisely because her request was valid. I hadn’t clearly stated what we were to each other.
Fuck buddies? No, that seemed too lame a word for how I felt around her.
There was a knock at my door, and I looked up, hoping against hope.
I’d left the party not too long after Lexi had left.
I’d barely registered the hollow feeling in my chest when I looked up to find her seat empty.
After a few minutes of scouring the room for any sign of her, I’d spotted her hugging her male teammate, who I remembered as Brian, on her way out.
It had made me curl my hands into fists.
I’d left the party but gone straight to my office. I had wanted to be alone, perhaps to research an even more dangerous sport to partake in that weekend.
When I heard the knock, I looked up expectantly. But the woman who walked in wasn’t the one I had expected to see.
Jill walked in, and I must have let my face give me away. “I know that look,” she said, stopping in front of my desk.
She looked beautiful, but her beauty didn’t do anything for me anymore. It didn’t stop me in my tracks, make me forget what I was working on, or drive me to walk over and pull her to me. Someone else affected me that way.
“You’re sulking,” she announced. “Was the party not good enough for you?”
I pushed my computer aside and stood up. “You know me,” I said, glad to find an excuse to blame for my sour mood. “I’m never happy with good enough.”
“Who was that woman?” Jill asked. “The one who had you looking all upset when you were handing out pizza?”
“No one,” I said, far too quickly.
Judging by Jill’s expression, I was giving her hope, and I should hate myself for it. Instead, I channeled my frustrations towards Lexi. I was angry with her for making me feel, when that part of me had been buried so deep that I’d forgotten it existed.
I wanted her to stop looking at me with those unflinching eyes, as though she knew something about me that others didn’t, and as though I was disappointing her.
I hated that look the most.
I also hated that, ever since our fight, Lexi had stopped wearing the clothes I’d sent her weeks ago. She was back to wearing clothes from her old wardrobe, and combined with her tear-stained expression, she’d been coming into work looking even more disheveled than before.
I’d seen her from afar, from the second floor’s overlook where I waited many mornings as she walked in, desperate to catch a glimpse of her.
While I’d hated her tear-stained expression, another part of me—the one with clenched fists and seething with frustration—refused to go down and set things right.
I walked over to retrieve glasses for Jill and I to have a drink.
Lexi was just another woman. There had been many before her, and many would come after.
A bitter taste rose in my mouth at that thought. A drink would wash that taste away. Before I could reach for the glasses, Jill walked over and stopped me.
“Instead of drinks, how about we go clubbing?” she asked, looking hopeful.
“It’s been perfectly dull around here lately.
Greg Marchand is back in town. Remember him?
His family used to throw those awful but somehow legendary Fourth of July parties at Lake George.
He and a few others from our old crowd said they’d join.
I think it would help cheer you up,” she said, placing a hand on my arm.
I checked my phone for text messages. There were some, but none from the woman I wanted to hear from. Why was I even thinking about her? Perhaps a night of clubbing and meeting someone new was exactly what I needed.
“Clubbing sounds great.”
An hour later, our group was mingling at a club.
To my surprise, Rafael from Lexi’s team had joined us.
Apparently he was friendly with one of my high school friends.
I nodded at him briefly, and he shot me a smug smile just before Jill tried to pull me onto the dance floor.
I wasn’t in the mood to dance or talk, so I watched from the bar as people danced together.
It was noisy, crowded, and a totally unsatisfactory way to spend an evening for a man of my age.
“Scowl any harder, and you’ll drive away some of the club’s patrons,” Greg joked, walking up to me. He took a sip of his drink. “Come on, man. Lighten up. Why don’t you go out there and dance? Maybe that’ll put you in a better mood.”
I set my half-empty drink aside on the counter. “Not interested in dancing,” I said curtly.
“Well, if you aren’t up for dancing …” Greg paused as a stunning, curvy brunette walked past us. He swallowed and turned to me. “God, she’s a ten.”
His eyes sought me, looking for acknowledgment, but I gave him my most disinterested look.
“Alright, alright,” he said with a grin, glancing around. “See anyone else you like?”
I shook my head.
“Well, you and Jill could always get back together,” he said, tilting his head in her direction.
She turned to us from the dance floor while the music pounded, and flashed me a smile, beckoning me over with her fingers. I held her gaze and took a long sip of my drink before shaking my head.
“You know everyone’s rooting for the two of you to get back together,” he said. I noticed that Rafael was listening in as I grimaced. We had been everyone’s favorite couple years ago, but the problem was that we were too similar. It was boring.
Jill didn’t challenge me, didn’t surprise me, or do anything unexpected. She fit so perfectly into my life, and maybe that was what the world wanted to see, but I wanted someone totally different. A very specifically different woman.
“She’s not my type anymore,” I said.
“Really? That’s a pity,” Greg said finally. “Especially since she’s working at Altika again … she was hoping you two could pick up where you left off.”
I turned to him with a raised eyebrow. “I didn’t tell her anything like that.”
He chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how Jill operates. When she wants something, she always gets it. Right now, she wants you.”
I shook my head, but before I could respond, Jill appeared beside us, gripping my arm.
“Come dance with me,” she said, pulling me toward the dance floor while giving Greg a withering look, as though she suspected him of ratting her out.
“I love this song,” she said as a new Dua Lipa track came on. She guided my hands to her hips and began to sway while her arms wound around my neck.
She looked deep into my eyes. “So, what’s got you looking all worried, Jonah?” she asked.
I slowly extricated her arms from around my shoulders. “I’m worried that you think your new job at Altika means a new start for the two of us,” I said bluntly, letting my arms fall to my sides.
Her expression didn’t change. She studied me carefully.
“Would that be so bad?” She looked meaningfully at my lips while bringing my hands around to her back, placing them on her ass.
“And,” she gave me a coy look, “I seem to remember you were quite satisfied with the way we fit together when we made love.”
Surprisingly, I couldn’t remember that anymore.
All I could think about was Lexi. I remembered the thrill I’d felt while touching her.
Even with her clothes on, I’d been completely aroused.
I remembered the way she’d looked when I touched her, the light in her eyes and the ecstasy in her voice when we made love.
That had been something extraordinary.
And yet we’d parted on such miserable terms, fighting at every turn. But I still felt the pull toward her. The urge to go back to her apartment instead of staying here.
What the hell did that say about me and my no-relationship stance? What did it mean given that Dad had encouraged me to only get serious about a woman who could fit into our lives?
“Who are you thinking about?” Jill breathed out, her eyes darting around my face as she studied my expression.
“No one,” I lied, removing my hands from her ass and crossing my arms.
She laughed. “Don’t lie, Jonah. I know you too well.”
She reached up and slid a thumb over my lips, and I flinched.
“You’re going to be my employee, Jill,” I said, pushing her hand away. “You can’t do this anymore.”
She smiled in a slow, seductive way. “As far as I remember, I start on Monday,” she said, leaning close to my ear. “So, I could still get away with doing whatever I want with you until then.”
God, the parallels that led me to Lexi were unbearable.