Page 40 of Nothing to You (Nothing to… #7)

“MEN ARE COMPLETE idiots,” Roxie said, coming into her apartment on Sunday.

“I agree with you.” Why was that relevant to the moment? “What did Zairn do now?”

“It’s not my guy, it’s your guy. He’s an idiot.”

Another point she wouldn’t refute. “I’d ask what he did this time, but I’m not sure I want to know.” As she closed the door and turned, the look of confusion on Roxie’s face stalled her. “What?”

“There’s a party downstairs. For you.” Was that the time? “All those contacts we promised to woo for Hope.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” she said. “I got caught up in—can you give me a half hour?”

“I thought that’s why you were… You didn’t hear about Rourke? He didn’t call you?”

“Call me about what?” she asked on a laugh. “If he’s being idiotic, he won’t call me. No, actually, he will because he never thinks he’s being idiotic. It’s up to me to clue him in.”

Roxie was wary. “Okay. Then a half hour it is. Have you tried Gin and It yet? I’ll mix some while you get ready.”

Except now she was intrigued. “What did Rourke do?”

“This party has to happen tonight if you want me and Zairn there. We’re flying across the ocean tomorrow.”

How could she forget? She wasn’t ducking out on her responsibilities but wouldn’t relax and have a good time without knowing what her jerk of a friend had done.

“You have to tell me now. I’ll get ready straight after. How can I call and mock him if I don’t have the insider information?”

Her blonde friend seemed reluctant, apologetic even.

“He thinks he’s doing the right thing. It’s a man thing.

They always want to fix everything. Have you noticed that?

Sometimes we just want to talk, want to vent and they take it as some call to arms. The Zs and Knox are all guilty of it.

I’m betting Rourkey-Baby is too. You protected him, so he wants to protect you. ”

And that changed the hue of things. “Protect me from what?”

“She threatened Huddle Hope, and he knows how important it is. To you. There’s no way he’d jeopardize something that means so much to you.”

Going closer, this was no longer funny. “She who?”

“Her influence isn’t the same as ours, but maybe there would be enough… overseas and—”

“Diva,” she said, getting there fast. The jerkoff. Her worst fear for him realized, yet anger overcame the insult. “I told him not to see her.”

Roxie just sighed. “He’s doing what he thinks is right. You can’t fault him for that.”

Oh, yes, she could. “I’ll kill him.”

Without another word to Roxie, she swiped her phone from the table she’d been working on and marched into the bedroom to close the door and dial.

“Babycakes, I—”

“Don’t you dare,” she snapped, pacing like the devil was on her heels. “You’re seeing her?” Silence. “Damnit, Rourke. What did I say?”

“You said, ‘it’s exactly what you would’ve done if someone showed up to hurt me.’ If someone’s threatening to hurt you, it’s my job to get in front of you.”

Why did he insist on being deliberately infuriating? By far, his worst trait. Despite her pacing, frustration still burned within her. This was stupidity. Sheer, ridiculous stupidity. Far worse than he usually displayed, and that was saying something.

“She’s doing this on purpose.” Her speed picked up. “It’s not about me. It’s about you. Getting you back. Being in your life. Manipulating you.”

“You don’t think I know that?” he hissed. “But I don’t give a shit. If she spreads lies and whispers in enough ears about you, negatively about you, Huddle Hope could suffer.”

“So this is a business decision?”

“I don’t answer to you and don’t need your permission to do anything. You said that too, and you were right. It’s my right to keep my free will.”

“And this is what you choose to do with it? To date your ex-girlfriend?”

“It’s dinner, not a date.”

“Dinner is a date, jackass. Are you going to sleep with her?” More silence. “Shit, Rourke, this is insane, you know that! You’re smarter than this.”

Even the pleading in her voice couldn’t shake him. “I’m smart enough to know that Hope is the real deal. We’ve worked too hard, you’ve worked too hard, to throw it away over one meal.”

“This doesn’t stop at one meal. As soon as she has you, as soon as you agree to one demand, she’ll have a list of two hundred more. This doesn’t stop with one dinner. Or is it the sex you’ve signed up for that’s driving this? You looking to get laid?”

“If I was looking to get laid, I’d get on a plane.”

“Not to here you wouldn’t, because if you do this, there won’t be anymore easy access for you.”

He snickered. “Baby, you can’t—”

“I’m not kidding, Rourke.” Her sincerity cut his obvious tease short. “No. Doing this is a mistake. Seeing her is a mistake. Opening yourself to that hurt again is a mistake.”

“I should just let her drag your name through the mud?”

“Who cares about my name? I’m a nobody. If we have to put Roxie at the head of Hope—”

“I already told you that’s not an option.”

“It is. I’d rather that than see you kowtowed by Diva because of me. I can work in the background, behind the scenes.”

“You need to be up front.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why are you hellbent on—”

“I’m the fucking boss, okay? What I say goes and I’m telling you I want you at the forefront of Huddle Hope. No backchat. I make the damn rules.”

Pulling rank? She wasn’t the only one not kidding around.

“Then go to her.” Her chest hurt. “Persuade her. Wine her, dine her, screw her, but know that’s the end of this, us, whatever it is.

” She exhaled an unamused laugh and stopped walking.

“And you thought you misjudged this when all along it was me. I got this wrong.”

“Radley—”

“No, I won’t do it. I won’t watch you be broken by a woman who almost took your soul the last time.

I don’t regret what I did at the fundraiser.

If I have to quit my job to take responsibility, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

If you go to her now and she sinks her teeth in, you’ll resent me for the rest of your life. ”

And she couldn’t wait around while their friendship, which had once held so much value, was reduced to ashes.

Diva would do it. “He’ll choose me over you.

” Diva, it turned out, was right. She’d been so damn cocky, so damn sure that it was her right to speak for him, to protect him, when she should have stepped aside.

What had her actions caused? His pain. And friends didn’t do that to each other.

“Don’t blow this up into something it’s not,” he said. “I’ll have dinner with her, we’ll talk—”

“Have sex.”

“Is that what’s juiced your snatch? There is no way I’ll have sex with her. I don’t want to have sex with her.”

“Until you’re sitting in your lair with alcohol, reminiscing, and she leans in…”

“No sex, Radley. She was never allowed to hang out in the lair. Not that she’d have wanted to. Entertaining was her thing; she’d always rather be downstairs surrounded by a hundred people than alone with me in my sweats.”

“Another reason you shouldn’t be doing this. Is that why you throw those parties? Because she wanted them? It’s like learned behavior. Stockholm Syndrome.” The guy was actually traumatized. “If you know you’re incompatible, why open the door again?”

“This is not me opening the door. This is one night. I’m not getting back with her. You don’t mean that much to me.”

“Stop, this is not funny. You want to joke, and you want me to quip back so we can fall into us. Except us never was an us if you’d do something like this without talking to me.”

“We’ve both acted on our own before. This is what we are. What we do. We protect each other.”

“I got in front of Diva to protect you and it cost me nothing. You get in front of Diva now and she’ll never let go. You’ll lose everything, who you are, what you love, what you value in life. I can’t watch it happen.”

“No one’s asking you to watch anything. You’re in New York.”

“But you will call me after, the next day, a week later, and you’ll want to tell me what happened. I’ll want to know, because I always want to know, but I can’t do that to myself. God, it makes me feel sick just imagining it.”

Them together in the moonlight. Alone. Intimate. A smile. A touch. And all because she’d got mouthy. She could’ve handled Diva better, been more personable or calmer, less confrontational. Damn her mood. It got riled so easily and that was a button she needed to ease off more often.

“There’s no point fighting about it. It’s done. It’s happening.”

“Tonight?” she asked. “Are you taking her out or eating in?”

“Whichever she prefers.”

Of course. “Because she makes the rules.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. “She’s going to hurt you.”

“But she won’t hurt you. I accept those odds.”

“It doesn’t have to be me or you. Stay home. Alone. Please. I’ll come home.”

“Good. I expect you on a plane within the hour.”

Usually, being held to ransom would fire her fury, now it aroused her hope. “And you won’t see her?”

“I’ll see her, but it’ll be done by the time you’re back.”

“No. You don’t go from her to me. Never.

I won’t be able to do it. You know I can see through the bullshit, right?

You’ll smile and talk about it like it’s no big deal, but I know your voice.

I don’t even have to see you to know that it will take a toll on you.

And you already know that. You don’t need me to tell you. Don’t do this, Rourke.”

“It’s done. We made plans.”

“Cancel them. Cancel on her.”

“Because that will help the situation,” he said with sarcasm. “Canceling now will make things worse.”

“Things can’t get any worse.” If she wasn’t on the phone, she’d throw up her arms. “This is worse. The worst.”

“Trust me, Radley. I know what I’m doing. I know how to handle her.”

“Handling her comes with a cost, financial and personal.”

“We can argue about this all night, it won’t change anything.”

“Your mind’s made up?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she said, swallowing to moisten her throat. “Then you won’t need me to come home. I’ll stay here in New York.”

“Permanently?”

“Permanently.”

“There’s no need to be so damn dramatic, Rad. I’ll call you tonight after—”

“Not after anything, I don’t want to hear it.” Squeezing her eyes closed, she fought to silence her mental narration on how that conversation would go. “There’s nothing you can say that will change my mind either. I can’t listen to you talk about her again. I can’t.”

“Okay.”

“You want to give this up for her? If our friendship is over, there’s no need for you to go through with this dinner. It won’t be your place to protect me anymore.”

“Then I guess there’s nothing stopping me from fucking her.”

“I guess not.”

“Is that where we’re at? An ultimatum?”

She hadn’t thought of it that way, but it seemed accurate. “Her or me?”

If he needed it in simple terms, it couldn’t get plainer.

“We don’t do ultimatums.”

“Apparently we do now,” she said. “You put the language to it, not me.”

“To show you how crazy this is! Shit, baby, nothing has changed since—”

“It has. I misjudged this.” She’d thought she held sway with him. Apparently, that was an illusion. “Have your dinner with her, but if you do, we’re done.”

And her efforts to protect him had been in vain.

“Great, this is really great, Radley. Thanks. Thank you very fucking much.”

The line died and she sucked in a breath. Were they done or was that just a fight?

A light knock at the door drew her attention as Roxie poked her head into the room. “You need booze?”

Her feeble smile wasn’t genuine, but it was appreciative. “More of it than you have in the building.”

Because with no prospect of Rourke calling later, or ever again, she needed to lose herself in something.