Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(98)

Ellie Ryder, aka a woman in need of more than ice cream to fill the hole in her heart





When I rule the world, peppermint crunch ice cream will be available all year long, because assholes who break people’s hearts don’t restrict their assholery and heart-breaking to Christmas.

Unless, apparently, they’re my asshole.

Check that.

My former asshole.

I stab my spoon straight into the cold carton that I grabbed at the store on the way here and ignore the twinkling holiday cheer on my parents’ gigantic tree in the living room. It’s late, so I didn’t tell them I was coming over, but I don’t want to spend one more night at my house this week.

Alone.

Sleeping in the bed where Patrick screwed me—and then screwed me over—just two nights ago.

Merry Christmas, Ellie. I’m in love with my neighbor.

I leave them a note taped to the coffee pot to let them know I’m here, then stomp down the stairs—softly, so I don’t wake them—and turn the corner into the rec room, where I pound the light switch up.

And then almost scream.

There’s a lump of a man sprawled on the couch watching a black-and-white movie, and as soon as the lights go on, he winces and throws his arm over his eyes. “Christ,” he snarls.

My heart backpedals from the precipice where it was about to leap, then surges into a furious beat all over again. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Wyatt Morgan drops his arm and squints at me. “Oh, good. It’s Ellie. Drop in to rub some salt in the wound?”

I inhale another bite of ice cream while I glare at him, because I didn’t ask him to be here, and he’s scowling just as hard as I’m glaring. “Beck’s place is downtown. Go get drunk there.” Even as the words leave my mouth, guilt stabs me in the lung.

Not the heart, because first, I’d have to like my brother’s best friend for my heart to be affected, and second, because I’m not sure I have a heart left.

I’m in a shit-tastic mood—who dumps their girlfriend on Christmas Eve?—but even in the midst of my own pity party, I know why Wyatt’s sitting in my parents’ basement, stewing himself in beer and watching It’s a Wonderful Life.

He doesn’t even roll his eyes at my order to get out.

“Beck’s having a party,” he informs me. “Didn’t want to go. Guess you weren’t invited. Or you prefer to add to the shit pile here.”

He tips back his beer, and another guilt knife attacks me, this time in the liver.

It’s entirely possible he has bigger problems than I do. I lost a boyfriend that I’ll probably acknowledge soon enough—for real, not just in a fit of anger—that I’m better off without.

The courts just handed Wyatt a final divorce decree that means he only gets to see his kid once a month.

If he travels five hundred miles to do it every time.

“Shove it, Morgan,” I tell him. “I don’t kick a man when he’s down.”

“Since when?”

“Oh, please. Like you can talk.”

It’s been like this since we were kids. My brother’s childhood best friend is the only man in the entire universe who can get under my skin and bring out my ugly faster than you can blink, and I swear he takes joy in doing it.

A ninety-five on your math test, Ellie? Why not perfect?

Nice shot, but you’re still down by eight.

Who taught you to hold a pool cue, a blind monkey?

And damn if all that taunting didn’t make me try harder every fucking time.

Because when he wasn’t taunting me, he was the first one holding out a hand to pull me off the pavement or out of the mud when I inevitably got trampled trying to keep up with Beck and his friends in soccer, street hockey, basketball, and whatever else I swore I was big enough to do with them.

He eyeballs my breasts, and my whole body lights up like the Christmas lights all over downtown.

“You gonna eat that whole carton?” he asks, and fuck, he’s not looking at my chest.

He’s looking at my ice cream, and here I am, getting turned on at the idea that he’s finally noticed I’m a woman.

I have issues.

I fling myself onto the couch next to him. “It’s loser ice cream, so yeah, I am,” I grumble. “Here. Have a bite, you drunk asshole.”

Those gray eyes connect with mine, and dammit, that’s straight lust pooling in my belly.

He’s sporting a thick five-o’clock shadow, and even sprawled out on the worn flowery couch in my parents’ basement, he exudes power and masculinity in a way I never would’ve expected from the skinny pipsqueak peeking out from behind his grandmother’s legs on the front porch twenty-some years ago.

Or maybe it’s the tight black T-shirt, with his biceps testing the limits of the cotton and detailing his trim stomach, even sitting down, and the gray sweatpants hinting at a more substantial package than I ever would’ve given him credit for.

Plus the knowledge that Pipsqueak Wyatt grew up to join the Air Force as some kind of badass pilot who flies untested aircraft, which takes a hell of a lot of guts, if you ask me when I’m willing to admit something like that about him.

Which is apparently tonight.

You used to like him, my subconscious reminds me, because it’s forgetting its place.