“Where’s Wren?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You work with her. You should know that.”
“She text me earlier to say thank you but the rest didn’t make sense. I figured she was in a rush.” The end of the message had been indecipherable even though I’d spent a good five minutes trying to decode it before giving up. “So where is she? You haven’t done something weird have you, and scared her off?”
Seph gave me a very hairy eyeball. “I leave the scaring off to you. She’s gone to meet Matt.”
“She’s gone to meet Matt?” I wondered if I’d walked into some alternate universe.
“Yep. I wasn’t sure who Matt was, but she needed to get some stuff back off him.”
I started to twitch, moving my shoulder back, cracking my neck, debating whether going to the gym was a good idea or I’d injure myself trying to get rid of this mood I was suddenly in.”
“So who is Matt?”
He knew damn well who Matt was.
“Dick.” I pinched his arm. It was a childish move, but still as satisfying as when I was fifteen and he’d just grassed me up to Marie for sneaking a girl into my room.
“If it makes you feel better, she wasn’t exactly thrilled to go.”
It didn’t. “Where was she meeting him?”
“You’re not going there.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think you’ll be safe. Or Matt will be safe. Or you’ll be safe from Wren if you turn up. I don’t sense that she has much patience with alpha dickheads who don’t respect that she can look after herself.”
“Who the fuck made you the king of insightfulness? And I’m not an alpha dickhead.” I couldn’t be. I had never been possessive or jealous over anyone.
Seph shrugged, completely unflappable. “Only because you’ve never had a relationship or let yourself feel that you need someone just so you can carry on breathing.” He stuffed a protein bar into his mouth and almost choked.
“Is that how you felt?”
He nodded, mouth full, and chewed rapidly. I waited without baited breath.
“Some of the time. When we first started seeing each other. And later, usually after we’d rowed or split up and got back together. I think I knew that was why we weren’t going to work: some days I didn’t miss her. Some days I didn’t want to see her.”
He was with his ex for years, on and off. None of us particularly liked her and she didn’t seem to want to be bothered with us.
“I don’t feel like that about Wren.”
“How? You don’t miss her? You were pretty pleased to hear from her over the weekend. Your face lit up like fireworks on New Year’s Eve whenever she sent you a message.”
Fucking insightful brother.
“We get along. I like talking to her. Beats putting up with your snarky arse.”
He shook his head. “So you’re telling me you haven’t fucked?”
I had three choices: lie – which I’d never done to Seph in my life; tell the truth or act like a manwhore and do the whole shit-eating thing. I went for the third.
“She may have indulged a few times.”
Seph proceeded to piss his sides and I realised I’d probably overdone the sit-down swagger.
“How many times did she ‘indulge’?”
