“Still hurts, huh?” His face looks curious, but not the good kind. He’s wondering if I still have feelings for the man who broke my heart.
“No. I’m over him. I have been for a long time.” And what I’m saying is true. I no longer feel hurt because any love I had for Lucas has withered away along with the sadness. “I would just prefer he never called again. In my mind, he doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Harsh, but I love it,” Brax says.
I give him a small smile. “I’m not usually a mean person.”
My phone rings again, and I groan.
“Maybe it’s important,” he tells me as his eyes dip to my hand.
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
He holds out his hand, and I willingly give him the phone. He touches the screen, and there’s nothing but panicked breathing on the other end.
“Iris?” Lucas’s voice fills the expanse of Brax’s place. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” I say as Brax opens his mouth and is about to answer for me.
“Listen, I’m in a bit of trouble…”
“I don’t care,” I tell him, staring at Brax’s face.
He’s taking all this much better than I would’ve if the roles were reversed.
“You need to care.”
“Why?”
Brax ticks his head toward the leather couch behind us, and I follow him, needing to sit down for this brief conversation with a man I swore I’d never speak to again.
“I got in over my head. It’s why I left.”
I almost burst into laughter. Left? He didn’t just leave. He didn’t go out for a run to the grocery store. He left me standing at the altar in front of everyone we knew and loved.
“That was years ago,” I say, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“I thought I had it under control, but it’s not anymore.”
Brax’s eyebrows are drawn together as his gaze dips to the phone screen in his hand, which his fingers are wrapped around like a vise.
“Not my problem,” I reply.
“It is, though. They’re coming for you.”
My heart stutters in my chest, and my eyes widen as Brax’s gaze comes back to me. “What?”
“I messed up, and now you’re at risk. They know about you. Watch your back. Don’t trust anyone,” he says, his words rushing out of him in a torrent.
“But I’m no one,” I whisper. “I don’t have anything to do with you, Lucas.”
My head is spinning, and I can barely breathe. How is this man still messing up my life years later? I thought I broke free of him and all the ways he affected my world, but once again, he’s trying to pull me back in and break me in an entirely different way.
“I’ll get it straightened out, but it’s going to take time,” he adds.
“What did you do, jagoff?” Brax says, finally entering the conversation.
“Who is that?” Lucas asks like he has any right to know who’s in my life.
