The beta backs up. “Look, man, I don’t have any cash if you’re here to rob the place.”
I prowl toward him. “I’m not here for money.”
His shoulders lose a little of their tension, but his green eyes are still wary. “Then why are you here?”
I spot the baseball bat propped against the wall near the cash register at the same time his eyes flick toward it. He angles his body in a way that can only mean one thing.
“Don’t,” I warn him before he can go for it.
His gaze returns to me. “What do you want?”
I lean into him. “What I want is for you to stayawayfrom Juniper. She is not for you.”
He stares at me for a beat, then lets out a sigh. “Ah. You.”
I raise my eyebrow. “You?”
It’s not the response I was expecting. Truth be told, I’m not sure what was.
He meets my gaze steadily. He does a good job of hiding his anger, but I see it. “You’re the one who hurt her.”
I stifle the urge to slam my fist against his jaw, because he’s right. Ididhurt Juniper.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snarl.
He steps around me.
I drag him back. “This conversation isn’t over.”
“Get out of my shop,” he says tiredly and shrugs my hand off his shoulder. He walks away. Not toward the baseball bat. Past it, and into a small room in the back.
Bristling, I follow. “I’ll go once you promise you’ll stay away from Juniper.”
I find him sitting behind a desk, having shrugged out of his coat, and busy flipping through a pile of papers. “No.”
“No?”
He glances at me. “So you get to hurt her all you like and demand no one else does?”
My lips flatten.
He refocuses on the papers on his desk. “I don’t know how you could hurt someone as sweet as June, but frankly, you don’t deserve her.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
After setting the papers down, he walks over to me. He doesn’t stop until inches separate us. He was scared of me before. Enough that he’d been going for a baseball bat for protection. There’s no hint of that fear now.
“What I know is that on one of my lowest days, I lashed out at her for the innocent mistake of wandering into my shop and needing help, yetshewas the one to apologize to me. She should have turned around and walked out. Instead, she thanked me for the shit job of helping her I’d done, and then offered to clean this shop when I pulled my head out of my ass.Iwouldn’t deserve her.” He looks me up and down, face twisted with disapproval. “After the things I read in the papers, you absolutely don’t deserve her.”
He walks back to his desk and sinks into the seat.
I watch him, not eager to leave, but in no hurry to stay either. I could have punched him in the face, but the thing is, he’s right. Abouteverything.
Instead, I cross my arms and lean against the doorframe. “You’re not sleeping with Juniper.”
She must trust him for him to be calling her June. They’re friends then. Not lovers, or she wouldn’t have been going on the date with Wilkes Booth.
I’d seen them hug, and I couldn’t get the thought of them fucking out of my head. Now I look at this guy, sitting in front of a stack of invoices on his desk, and nothing about him gives the impression of him being loved-up. He just looks tired and fed up.
