Could things get any worse? Kitty and I walked to the elevator in my parking garage only to find that we weren’t alone.
“Hey, Jess.” Cole, sounding way too friendly for how I felt toward him. “How’s it hangin’?”
I kept my expression blank. “Cole.”
Kitty gave him a grimace.
“Oh wow, are you Kitty Gatto?”
“In the flesh,” she said curtly.
“Jess, I didn’t know you were that tight with Kitty. We should all go get a drink.”
“I don’t think we’ll be doing that.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You were supposed to come with me to her engagement party, if you’ll recall.”
“Why are you being so nasty, Jessie? I thought there were no hard feelings.”
I drew back as we all walked into the elevator. “No hard feelings? You cheated on me and blamed the demise of our relationship on me! You made me feel worthless. You constantly went out of your way to show me how unimportant I was to you.”
His face reddened. “I didn’t put smelly-ass fish in your apartment. I had to pay a fine for that smell, you know. I almost got evicted. I still haven’t found the last of it.”
“Maybe if you paid any attention to detail you’d have figured it out by now.”
He got closer to me. Kitty’s whole body stiffened, ready toattack. I was extremely glad she was with me. He couldn’t gaslight me out of this one.
“I could have had your little boyfriend arrested for vandalism, you know. He broke and entered. I still could. You made my life hell.”
I got right in his face as the doors opened on our floor. “Maybe you’ve had just a little taste of how you made me feel.” I looked to Kitty, who nodded, and we walked to my apartment door.
Right before I got inside, “I’m sure the police will be really sympathetic to you when I call this in.”
I wheeled around. I’m a pretty reasonable person. I don’t like making enemies in my life, and somehow I’d encountered both of mine in the span of an hour. “What do you want, Cole?”
He sighed. “Tell me where the last of it is.”
I hadn’t talked to Mikey yet. We were going to have plenty to talk about aside from this whole encounter. He’d told me not to tell Cole where it was, but if it was tell Cole or have Mikey arrested, I’d tell him.
“If I tell you, you’re not going to the police, right?” Cole was a shithead, but he wasn’t fully diabolical. If he said he wouldn’t, I believed him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll drop it.”
“Check your curtain rods. And don’t even think of being friendly with me again.”
I slammed the door behind me.
Chapter 41
Mikey
When I checked my phone after the game, I had my usual post-game string of texts from Jessie. Except, these weren’t entirely typical.
Jessie Girl
Git him! Smack him!
I laughed at that one. The thought of “smacking” someone in hockey was a fun idea. There was a picture of her looking genuinely happy in my jersey, holding Sorrento’s baby and smiling with some of the other wives. I didn’t expect to feel some kind of way about her holding a baby, but she looked like a natural. We hadn’t talked about kids. I hadn’t even thought about wanting kids until I met her, because it didn’t even seem like a possibility. I didn’t hate the idea.
Nice goal. You look hot
