Page 48 of Chasing Blue

“You worried about repercussions from this?” Shann holds the phone up before passing it back to Jack.

I shrug. “You watched the video. Did it show the way Span launched him out the door?” Shannon nods, and I shrug. “I don’t think he’ll come back.” I don’tsoundin the least bit convincing, probably because I don’tfeelconvinced what I’m saying is the truth. “I had four dates with the man. Right from the first, he tried to control everything, so I ended it with him on the third. He decided I just needed time to think about things, so when he returned from a work trip a week or so later, I agreed to meet again, and that time, I emphatically reassured him I’d made the right decision, and we were done. That,” I gesture towards the phone, “is the outcome.”

“Don’t like it,” Shannon replies with a head shake. “Any man who throws a punch at a woman like that . . . Nuh. Where’d you live? Does he know? Do you have security?”

“Upstairs, we have separate apartments next door to each other,” I point between me and Zoe as I talk.

“You have a code to get in the building?” Jack asks

“Yeah,” I reply. “And a coded front door, and a door camera, and I have Mac.”

“Mac?” Jack asks as his head snaps back.

“Maca, my dog.”

“Your dogs called Maca?” Shannon asks.

“Carnage fan . . .” Jack states without taking his eyes off mine.

“You remembered?” I question.

“I remember every-fucking-thing, Blue.”

That hollowness I was feeling inside earlier is replaced with something else, and then he licks those bloody lips of his again, and that something else is replaced with another something else, and my breath escapes as a pant.

We’re in a bar full of people, surrounded by our friends, and I think I just had some kind of mini orgasm. My cheeks burn, and he winks at me.

He winks at me because he knows! Jack Motherfucking Cole knows exactly what he just did, and I’m not sure if I want to slap him or climb on his face and ride it all the way up to my second-floor apartment.

“How many views?” I ask Jack. He looks at the phone and shakes his head.

“This one’s on TikTok and has had fifty-nine thousand. You wanna look?”

I nod. I don’t want to look, but I need to see what’s been put out there and what’s being said. I press play, and there I am, standing pretty much in the same spot I am now.

“So, youdidn’tsay it?” I cringe as Jack turns up the volume and the sound of my voice plays out from the phone. “If we pull up the security footage, it won’t show an altercation involving you and the staff? It won’t show Matt Newcombe, the esteemed business lawyer for Collins, Oaks, and Carpenter, being helped from the premises by Anthony after you called his husband an Aids-infected fag?”

My lips tremble, and my eyes fill with tears as I take in how angry and upset Iwas. I watch as Matt lunges forward swinging a punch, my head jolting back, as his fist connects with my cheek just as Span runs at him and takes him down to the floor before him and the barman lift Matt by the arms, and literally run him out of the door to a big cheer from everyone inside. The footage ends, and I close the app down before it starts to replay.

“Well, at least I know who he is now,” Shannon says. “Matt Newcombe best start looking both ways.”

“Honestly, Shann, I don’t think . . .”

“Has he done that before?” Jack interrupts. “Did he hit you before?”

“No, never.”

“He was Mr Smooth when they first met. She did the right thing and got shot of him when he started to show his true colours,” Zoe explains.

“He could lose his job over this,” I tell her.

“Good. Why do you even care?” she asks.

“If I catch up with him, he’ll lose more than his fucking job,” Shannon adds before I can reply.

“I don’t care. I just know how pissed off he’ll be if that happens,” I explain.

“No less than he deserves,” Span says. “Prick better not ever show his face around here again.”