My heart plummets. Bile rises in my esophagus at the thought of her with any man other than me. It doesn’t matter how much time has passed—I still want her. Still can’t stand the thought of someone else doing the things I long to do with her.
I mask my irritation as my hand curls into a fist on my lap. “New boyfriend?”
“Yeah. She swears it’s not serious and that they’re just having some fun.” He shudders at the thought, but all it does is make my blood boil. “I’m not a fan of the dude.”
With my elbows on the table, I lean forward, engrossed in the conversation. “You’ve met him? What don’t you like about him?”
Dylan’s shoulders lift indifferently. “I don’t know. He’s a biker. Don’t love that.”
“How did she meet him?”
“How do you think?”
My eyes narrow. Crossing my arms over my chest, I lean back in the metal chair. “The bar?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he a part of the gang?”
Indy works at a bar in Ridgewood that also doubles as a clubhouse for the city’s vigilante motorcycle club. To say I hate her surrounded by a bunch of bikers, potentially putting herself in danger simply because of the company she keeps, is an understatement.
“Not that I am aware of”—his brows crumple as he thinks about it—“but I think he wants to be with the way she said he hangs around. He's one of their regulars.”
“Why would she start dating a regular?”
I’m well aware I’m peppering Dylan with questions he likely wouldn’t know the answers to, and that I shouldn’t give a shit about the answers to, but I can’t help it. Ineedto know.
It’s baffling how after all these years he still has no idea I’m in love with Indy.
“Beats me.” He shrugs again. “I thought that shit wasn’t allowed, but she’s proving me wrong.”
I bark a laugh to hide my disdain. My stomach twists as the waitress returns with our drinks, placing them down in front of us. She flashes a megawatt smile at Dylan and sashays away again.
“If she says it’s not serious, why are you referring to him as her boyfriend?” I press.
Picking up his beer, he takes a long sip of it, swinging his gaze to one of the flat screens across the patio with UFC recaps playing. “Becauseshereferred to him as her boyfriend,” he finally says when his drink’s half gone.
She referred to him as her boyfriend?
Anger burns through me, intensifying with each passing second I sit here and stew. Dylan returns his attention to the TV, and I tap my fingers against the sticky wood table.
To my knowledge, Indy’s never classified anyone as a boyfriend before, and that’s a hard pill to swallow.
For years I’ve held onto the notion of there someday being an us. I’ve held onto that lingering piece of hope that because neither of us had ever gotten serious with someone, we were holding out for each other.
Now she’s calling another man her boyfriend, probably out doing God knows what with him right this very second, and I’m sitting across the table from her brother about to share a meal with him like he didn’t just drop a grenade directly onto my lap and watch it explode.
So what the hell am I going to do about it?
CHAPTER THREE
Two days later, my truck idles outside of the bar Indy works at. My jaw tics as I look down at the last message she sent me, the one where she shoved her hand into my chest and ripped my heart out.
Indy
Yeah, I started seeing someone.
It’s why I’m here. To see for myself.
