Page 37 of The Fire

I dished up the pasta, Parker poured us glasses of water from the pitcher in the fridge without being told, and I carried our food to the living room so I wouldn’t have to look at the destroyed wall while we ate. After swallowing my first bite of pasta, I explained about Brian.

Sort of.

“I don’t get it,” Parker said. He’d plopped on the far end of the brown leather sofa and drawn his legs up pretzel-style. “The guy brought you a nice surprise dinner and you broke up with him? What do you do to door-to-door salesmen? Summary execution?”

“He let himself into my house without telling me,” I corrected. “Then I launched an ice scraper at his head thinking he was an intruder, andthenwe broke up.”

“Still.”

“Still?” I rolled my eyes. “Stillwhat?”

“I dunno. I mean, if you’re not a hundred percent into him, it’s good that you broke it off. But it seems excessive for one little mistake.” Parker twirled pasta on his fork and shoveled it in his mouth. His eyes closed and he hummed in pleasure. “Especially when it wasn’t a big deal.”

I had to clear my throat as I tried to remember what we’d been discussing. “It wasn’t just the dinner. There was other stuff.”

“Yeah?” Parker was unimpressed. “Like what?”

“Like, I dunno. We wanted different things, I guess.” I pushed my hair off my forehead. “I didn’t want a serious relationship. I didn’t want…”Brian.

“Was he needy?” Parker demanded, his eyes just a little too heated. “Too attached?”

“Huh?”

Parker waved a fork in the air dismissively. He shoveled more pasta into his mouth and talked around it. “Just sayin’, you have a track record for being an asshole during breakups.”

“Excuse me? How the hell would—”

He lifted one eyebrow and my chest constricted.

“We’renottalking about that,” I reminded him through gritted teeth.

Parker snorted. “You notice that you enforce the polite strangers rule only when it’s convenient? Because apparently it’sfinefor you to bring up the time we didn’t havesex, but I try to establish a pattern of behavior, and suddenly—”

“Parks? You’ve got tomato on your chin.”

“Shit.” He stuck his tongue out of his mouth and swiped at his chin. “Better?”

My mouth went dry, just like that. “Yeah.”

“So, what happened next?” Parker demanded, scooping up more chicken. “After you were all, ‘How dare you come into my home and bring me sustenance without an engraved invitation, Brian! How dare you like me more than I like you!’”

“It wasnotlike that!” I insisted, even though it sort of was.

“Patterns of behavior,” Parker sang.

“There is no pattern! You’re making this shit up.”

“Mmmkay,” Parker said, patently humoring me and making me want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him… or something. “So, what happened after you broke up with himfor totally different reasons that are not connected in any way to any patterns of behavior?”

“I hate you,” I said. “Just so you know.”

Parker laughed, and it made his eyes crinkle. “The feeling issomutual,” he said, and I swear, just that smile had a shiver dancing up my spine and cold sweat popping out on my neck.

I cleared my throat. “I said I wanted to break up, and I drove him home to Camden since he hadn’t brought his car. Which is how I happened to be out on the road.”

“Hmm.” Parker chewed meditatively. “So, does that mean I have Brian to thank for my rescue?”

“You haven’t even thankedmefor your rescue,” I reminded him, maybe a little crossly. “Instead, you threatened to have me arrested and then tried to injure me.” I rolled my shoulder, which was actually feeling somewhat better, probably thanks to the shower.