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But he chuckled. “No fucking way.”

“Why?”

He gave me a look after he shifted the car into park and pulled the handbrake on.

Fine, maybe a call from his baby sister asking Toni to go easy on the new guy wouldn’t be the best look for Theo.

“It’s not even that,” he shook his head, leaning against the headrest.

“Come on,” I jabbed him in the shoulder. “Out with it.”

Theo rolled his head to the side to look at me, eyes lingering and roaming with a little more warmth and hope than I liked and I felt my stomach drop.

God, please no.

NoNoNoNoNoooooo.

That look was all too familiar and suddenly the space inside the car felt claustrophobic.

“I like you, Zarina,” he frowned down at me, fingers flexing like he wanted to reach out to me. I forced my eyes to drop to my lap, to the console, anywhere but at his expecting eyes. “I mean, I really like you.”

Fuck.

There it was.

The words that had ruined any type of friendship I ever managed to have with a man. The words that shifted lifelong friends into hostile pigs, crying assholes, vengeful dickheads.

That was different, though.

“Theo, I…” I had no idea what I was going to say, but I had to fill that silence with something. “I like you as a friend, I really do. But even if I did feel more,” I shook my head, “it wouldn’t be smart?—”

“Oh, I know,” Theo cleared his throat, cutting me off and straightening again.

Any sign of vulnerability was gone, as was that hint of warmth in his eyes. I watched the predictable shift happen, that transformation triggered by rejection.

“Can you imagine?” he chuckled. “Toni would cut my dick off. I just mean… I think that we could have had some fun. In different circumstances, of course.”

He put his hand on my leg, and I froze.

I watched as it moved upwards, and the movement seemed to happen in slow motion. His hand paused at the hem of my skirt before ignoring the material boundary completely. He just kept going, pushing it up, letting his fingers trail higher and higher.

“Right,” I shifted, trying not to make the way my body cringed against his touch too obvious.

And before that little move he made that caused my skin to crawl, I would have agreed with him.

Theo and I probably could’ve had fun. I enjoyed his company, enough so that I didn’t even mind being shadowed by him 24/7. But now, I wanted nothing more than to never see him again.

Especially as he dipped his hand from the top of my thigh to between my legs, trailing up and up until his pinky finger brushed against the seam of my panties.

“Theo. Enough,” I cut out, my voice more wobbly than I liked.

I knew that the ego shift was a defence thing, a protection against his pride, but it didn’t change the way that I now saw him.

If he had accepted it with grace, with respect, maybe I could’ve handled being around him without feeling like I wanted to empty my guts onto the floor of his car.

He recovered by swiftly removing his hand, but not before patting my knee a few times like someone might do while comforting a buddy.

If I hadn’t still felt nauseous by the encounter, I might’ve even second-guessed whether or not it had actually happened. It happened quickly, and he had moved so casually, that someone might’ve even mistaken it for a friendly gesture.