The other man frowned. “You lost?”
“Rip,” I started to say, ignoring the man I was supposed to be on a date with, if you could even call it a date since he’d made me pay for my Sprite. “What are you doing here?”
The other man glanced at me. “Who the fuck is this?”
I ignored him again, but Rip wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was staring at my date with a deceptively lazy expression. But there wasn’t a single thing easygoing about his next words. “Time for you to go.”
Time for him to go?
The other man made another face before focusing on me and asking, angrily, “You got a boyfriend?”
Me? A boyfriend?
“I’m none of your business,” Rip kept talking. “You can go home now.”
I wasn’t sure why I reached over, but I did, and touched my boss’s forearm, earning his attention. “What are you doing here?” I just about hissed at him.
Those blue-green eyes slid toward me, still lazily, and his cheek moved just enough to tell me that might have been considered a smile. “Ending this bullshit-ass date you’re on,” he stated, confusing me even more.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” the man asked with a scowl.
His words triggered Rip, because his gaze swept over to the side and he gave the guy a blank look I was pretty familiar with. “You.”
“Me?”
“She’s not interested,” Rip claimed calmly.
The guy decided to include me in the conversation again by swiveling his gaze toward me. “Is he for real?”
I decided to ignore him and tapped my fingers on the bigger man’s forearm. “What are you doing here?”
That cheeky expression fell off, and he just… stared at me. All of him just… focused. Too focused. On me.
“Are you his fucking girl?” the other guy demanded, his pitch going higher.
His girl? Rip’s girl?
My “no” came out at the same time Rip said, “What do you think?”
What do you think?
Was this man, who I hadn’t spoken to in two weeks up until yesterday, implying that I washis girl?
“No,” I told Rip, tapping his forearm again through the material of his compression shirt. “What are you talking about?”
“She is?”
Rip’s expression didn’t falter for a second, but it was the man he had his attention on. “Did I stutter?”
“Are you fucking serious?” the man spat, shoving his chair back before giving me an angry look. “You know what? I don’t have time to deal with this kind of shit. You can fuck off, and she can—”
Rip got to his feet so fast, it was a blur. “You like having all those teeth in your mouth? Or you good with going home, missing a few of them?”
“Fuck—” the other man started.
“Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to finish that sentence,” Rip spit slowly. “I’ve broken fuckboys like you for fun, and now you’re giving me a reason to. You don’t wanna go there. Trust me.”
He’d broken—
