15. Renee

It’s almost seven. I’m dressed, my hair’s curled, and I have a notebook and pen stuffed in my bag. I’m ready to go. All I need is the guy to come knocking.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve spent the last twenty minutes while I was getting ready praying that, when we walk out into the hall to leave, Weston won’t be lurking. It seems that every time I walk out of Sutton’s apartment, Weston walks out of his and we end up in the elevator together or at the trash chute out in the hallway.

Finally, at 7:05, Sutton’s doorbell rings. I pull the door open and smile.

“Sorry I’m late,” Orion says. “You look fantastic.” He leans forward and kisses my cheek. Very French of him. He smells nice, though. I return the favor with a quick peck on the stubble.

“Thank you,” I stammer. “You look?—”

Before I can finish, I hear the exact sound I was dreading. The telltale whoosh and squeak of the door opening to PH01. It’s like the crypt of a zombie creaking open and letting the monster loose.

But monsters never looked this good.

Orion is the one dolled up, with his hair gelled back into loose blond curls and a short-sleeved button-down open to expose his brawny chest. But Weston is the one I can’t take my eyes off of.

He’s wearing gray sweats—unfair—and a black tank top shirt that shows off his arms—doubly unfair. His hair is a mess, his beard is two days’ overgrown, and yet, despite all that, he’s absolutely droolworthy.

I watch as his eyes flick from me to Orion. From Orion to me. Back and forth a few times over before something cold and concrete settles into his facial expression.

“O,” he greets coolly. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Orion bristles like a kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Yo, West. I was just?—”

“C’mere,” Weston interrupts. “Come in and chat.”

“We’re a little busy right now,” I pipe in.

He doesn’t even look at me. He’s skewering Orion with a mere gaze. “It’ll just take a minute.”

There’s literally no limit to how much I hate Weston Scott right now. I want a rash to develop in places on his body that he cherishes. I want him to stub his toe when it’s cold. I hope his taxes get audited.

But even I know that there’s no denying him when he cranks up the power of his stare like that. Orion must know it, too, because he sighs and slumps his shoulders.

“I’ll be right back,” he mumbles to me. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Then he mopes off like he’s about to walk the plank. Weston steps aside to let him into his penthouse. Just before he shuts the door, he looks at me.

I’d say, “If looks could kill…” but this isn’t a violent one. It’s more like sticking a fork in the electrical socket. I’m almost physically knocked backwards by the intensity of a force I most definitely should not have been playing with.

Then the door closes, and he’s gone.

“Seriously?” I squeak. I’m saying it to an audience of zero, though, because the hallway is empty. Fluorescent lights buzz. I try to listen, but if Weston is indeed chopping Orion into bite-sized pieces like I fear he might be, he’s doing it silently.

I stand there fuming for a full minute before it occurs to me that I can close my door and walk away. If I wanted, I could give up on the whole night and drown myself in butter pecan ice cream.

But as I’m about to close the door and kick off my heels, Weston’s door opens and he and Orion emerge. Orion walks over. The light in his face that was there when he first saw me is gone now. In its place is grim resignation.

“Ready?” he croaks hollowly.

“Uh… yeah. Sure. Let’s go.”

I sense Weston lingering in the open mouth of his door, but I don’t look back. I pretend to be super fascinated by the elevator buttons as we climb aboard. Only when the doors close do I let out a sigh of relief.

Orion is silent on the way down. I am, too, because I have no idea how to break the frigid ice that Weston just Zambonied over our evening. “What did Weston have to say?”

Without tearing his gaze off the ground between his feet, he shakes his head. “Nothing really. Just hockey stuff.”

No one in this otherwise-empty elevator believes him. I’m surprised he managed to get that lie out with a straight face.

But before I can press, the elevator dings as we reach the lobby. He doesn’t so much as glance at me as he steps out.

“I’m parked on the street.”

We walk outside. It’s a mostly nice night in Los Angeles—no rain, no imminent threat of brushfire, a warm breeze every now and then. But it feels frigid and gray.

Orion stops near a Porsche SUV and holds the passenger door open but still doesn’t look at me. As soon as I’m in, he shuts the door and walks around to the driver’s side. He starts the car and races away.

“I really want to thank you,” I murmur into the awkward silence. “I’m hopeless with all this hockey stuff. It just doesn’t compute. It’s like trying to build IKEA furniture but all the instructions are in Chinese.”

Instead of speaking, he gives a firm head nod. Just the one. I don’t have to guess what the problem is. Or specifically, who the problem is. My blood starts a low, slow boil. That rat bastard.

“What did he say to you?”

“Hm?” He doesn’t look at me.

“What did that asshole say to you?”

“He didn’t?—”

“Don’t lie to me.” I shake my head, mentally plotting all the ways I’m going to make Weston Scott suffer. “What did he say?”

“He—”

“Pull the car over.”

Orion sighs, but he does as I requested. I reach over and press the button to kill the engine. I want to hear exactly why I’m going to maim Weston before I go back and do it.

“Orion.” I say his name softly. “What happened? What did he say to you?”

He shakes his head. But he still isn’t looking at me.

Fine. That’s how he wants to handle it? That’s on him. I’m not going to play this game with these insufferable men.

I shove the door open and step out of the car. I don’t care if I lose a leg to gangrene from these damned heels. I’m going back to the apartment building and I’m going to demand the truth from Weston, and if he lies to me, I’m going to shove him off the rooftop.

“Renee, wait!” I don’t. His door slams. “Come on, Renee.” He jogs to catch up, which is a lot easier than it would be if not for these shoes. I grimace. Whoever designed these things is deeply misogynistic.

If my feet didn’t hurt so bad, I wouldn’t have stopped, but since they do, I halt and turn to face him. “Well?”

He sighs and strokes his hair out of his face. “He said you’re off-limits.”

“Excuse me?”

“He said you’re off-limits to anyone in a Firebird uniform.”

I screw up my face. Then, snarling, I turn and resume my stomp back towards what will soon become a murder scene in The Palais’sUnit PH01.

But I only make it a handful of steps before I catch my heel on a crack in the sidewalk. My ankle turns and I go toppling forward.

For a moment, my life flashes before my eyes. There’s a bit too much time spent watching Below Deck than I care for.

I brace for impact. I’m about to be eating concrete in three, two, one…

If Orion didn’t come out of nowhere to swoop a hand around my waist and stop me.

He pulls me upright against his chest. “Jesus. You okay?”

Now, it’s my turn to sigh. Orion is the definition of a tortured soul. I want to be attracted to him. I want to want him.

Unfortunately, my body chemistry isn’t syncing with his. The only chest I’m yearning to be held against is Weston’s. And I hate myself for it.

“They really oughta fix these sidewalks. It’s a disgrace.” He shakes his head like he’s offended on my behalf. Then his gray eyes go wide. “Your foot is bleeding.”

Before I can say anything, he kneels down and lifts my foot to investigate. His touch is gentle on my calf.

“It’s really fine, Orion.”

He shakes his head. “Nope. It’s not.” In a quick motion, he sweeps me off my feet and carries me like a baby back to the car. He opens the passenger door, sets me in the seat, and pulls a first-aid kit out of the glove compartment. “I don’t think you need stitches,” he observes as he examines the bottom of my foot. “But let me disinfect it just in case.”

He ignores my protests and gets to work. I watch him, feeling miserable and self-loathing at the same time.

I should be practically swooning over this guy. He’s nice and thoughtful and beautiful—and yet I feel like my vagina is a tumbleweed when I look at him. Dry and dead and headed somewhere else.

I would love to know what is wrong with me that I’m more attracted to the guy who acts like I have the plague.

“So what did he threaten you with?”

He stiffens but doesn’t look up at me. “You know, the usual. Bodily harm. Death of my firstborn. IcyHot in my jockstrap for the rest of my career.”

I can’t help but grin. “I’d put my money on you.”

He looks up and grins right back. Once more (and just as uselessly as all the other times I’ve done it), I wish that smirk made my heart kick up its pace the way my villain’s does. “West doesn’t play by rules. He thinks of them more as suggestions.”

I snort. “This is my surprised face,” I say, completely deadpan.

“And,” he adds, “he’s a friend. I would never let a woman come between us. Even one who looks like you.”

I sigh. “We can be friends, I guess. Or did King Asshat outlaw that, too?”

He plasters a Band-Aid over my cut and wipes his palms on his pants as he stands. “Yeah. We can be friends.” He offers me a hand to shake.

I eye it mournfully for a moment. There was a different path here for me to take. A smoother path, a sweeter path. But that’s a path for a different woman.

So I shake his hand and force a painful smile onto my face. “Friends it is.”

Nodding, he lets go of my hand and tucks his into his pocket. “I still have reservations for dinner if you want…”

“They have a no shirt, no shoes, no service rule? If so, I’m afraid the answer’s no. It would take an act of God to make me put those evil shoes back on.”

“Fair enough. We could always hit a drive-thru and go eat fries on the beach.”

I grin. “Now, you’re speaking mylanguage.”