Casanova(13)

I wanted to know if she kissed with as much fire as she spoke.

I didn’t know what I’d find when I walked into my father’s office yesterday. More to the point, I didn’t know who I’d find. The short run-in I’d had with Lani outside the baby store didn’t exactly involve a whole lot of conversation. Maybe I was a fool for thinking the same thing would have happened when I saw her at my house.

Maybe I’d assumed she would still be the same quiet, introverted Lani Montana who smiled at me over the top of a ratty old paperback book. The same demure, soft girl who peered at me through her hair when I tried to convince her to help me with essays.

Maybe I’d assumed nothing at all. Maybe I’d waded in there, guns blazing, and not considered anything.

Scratch that. That was exactly what had happened. I’d gone in, firing on all cylinders, not giving a fuck about anything or anyone.

Because I knew one thing: For Lani to make me look like a fucking decent person, she’d have to find out just how far I’d sunk in the past few years. She’d have to delve into every bad damn decision I’ve ever made.

She’d soon find out that the high school hero was now the family failure.

I didn’t want to think about how much I hated the thought of that. It was fucking selfish, but I knew that back then, I was important to her. Just as she was to me. I was fucking somebody to her—she saw beneath the shit my so-called friends never tried to.

In the bullshit haze of judgment and lies that came with being at the top of the social ladder in high school, she was my breath of fresh air.

Would she have ever left without a word if she knew that?

I didn’t know. I didn’t want to think about it either, but it was just too damn hard not to.

Eight years of silence.

Now here she was, exploding into my life like a supernova.

Son of a bitch.

I hit the switch on the treadmill to turn it off. When the belt stopped moving, I stepped off, grabbed a towel, and wiped my face. Camille tried to convince me to run with her on the beach this morning, but I knew the risk of running into Lani was too great. Granted, my presence would stop Camille spilling all my secrets that weren’t off-limits, but I knew I’d open my mouth and piss Lani off more.

Per my parents, pissing off the person hired to make you look good isn’t the way to convince her that you aren’t a total jackass.

Then again, by the time Camille was done gossiping out her asshole, Lani would be two hundred percent sure I was a jackass anyway, so I considered it a moot point. She might have insisted to me that she wasn’t a fiction writer, but hell. By the time she was through with my father’s ridiculous idea, she’d be a fully-fledged novelist.

Sure, there were good things about me. I wasn’t a horrible person, really. I did good things for people. It was a surprise because I chose not to scream and shout about it from the rooftops. Nobody needed to know about my good deeds.

I’d likely fucked up enough that I had a direct flight to Hell anyway.

The door to the gym opened. Camille strolled in, a towel around her neck, and met my eyes. “Guess who I saw on the beach?”

“Lani?” I asked sarcastically.

“Well, yeah. When you didn’t want to run with me, I called her and we ran together.” She poked her tongue out at me. “But, no. I saw Dana.”

I blinked at her, uncapping my water bottle. “I have no idea who that is.”

Camille stared at me. “Uh, Dana? Redhead? Weapons of mass destruction?” She pointed at her chest as she said that last thing. “You dated her for, oh, a personal record of an entire week last summer?”

“Dana...Dana...” I looked around the gym, racking my brains. Dana? Who the hell was Dana? “Nope.”

“Of course you can’t remember.” She sighed and turned around.

I followed her. “What the hell does that mean?”

She barely glanced over her shoulder as she went up the stairs into the kitchen and said, “Not what I’d usually mean by saying it—and that happens to be that you’re a fucking pig—but this time, it’s because I’m looking into your pretty little eyes and seeing Lani stare back at me.”

I snorted and drained the last of the water from my bottle. “Yeah, right. And don’t ever tell me my eyes are pretty again. I’m not a four-year-old girl.”

“You tantrum like one.”

“You might be a girl but I can still kick your ass.”

She punched me. “No, I mean...you’re obsessed with the fact she’s back. Come on, Brett. You burst into Dad’s office when he’s having a meeting with her and pretty much fight with her on the spot. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. I’m not obsessed with her.” I grabbed the ingredients out the fridge for a smoothie and went to the blender. “I’m pissed that out of all the people he could hire, he picks her. And I know you were behind it, so don’t deny it.”

“I wasn’t going to. But it might surprise you to know I didn’t do it to piss you off.” She joined me by the blender, grabbed the kale, and took it over to the chopping board. Pulling a knife from the block, she said, “I did it because Whiskey Key is hardly a hotspot for freelance journalism. She wants to leave, but she also wants to stay for Connie. Don’t think she actually wants to spend time with you and make you look like something other than the ass she knows you are.”