“Hi. Leo?” There. She sounded like a respectable adult, mostly.
“Uh, everything okay there?”
A wild laugh lodged in her throat. She was weighing the benefits of homelessness versus begging for a loan, and she’d had to fish a pair of her dad’s boxer shorts out of her clean laundry that morning.
“Everything’s peachy. Just trying to figure out which of my kidneys to sell so I can make rent.”
“About that.” This time he was the one sounding a little wheezy. “I have a… proposition.”
“I’m not sleeping with you for grant money.”
She grimaced as soon as the joke was out of her mouth, particularly when Leo’s answering growl was so very forbidding. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said hastily. “It’s just you said proposition, and it’s kind of a funny word to use for…”
He was silent for so long that she worried he’d hung up on her. For all she knew he was about to retract whatever he’d called to offer her in the first place. But when he spoke again, it wasn’t what she was expecting.
“What did you want me to apologize for, really? That day in my office.”
His question took her by surprise, and her mouth went dry. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“That’s why I asked,” he said impatiently. “Tell me what you wanted an apology for.”
The old Leo wouldn’t have pushed this hard, and he never would’ve used such a commanding tone.
A flash of what it would be like for adult Leo to issue those commands to her in bed hit her, and she squeezed her thighs together. Damn, he still did things to her vajean, especially this new version of him. He was amannow, and she was hyperaware of how attractive she found that, even while resentment curdled under her skin following every one of their interactions. Being near him was too damn complicated.
But she’d never shied away from a fight before, and she wasn’t going to start now. “If you must know, Leonidas, you made me think you were going to kiss me that night at the Dairy Bar. And you did that on purpose to mess with me. Not cool.”
“Not cool” was an understatement. She’d rather shave her own head than let Leo know the way she’d held her breath, waiting to feel his lips on hers again before he sucker-punched with his cruel words.
Thea’s head slowly reappeared over the side of the bed, her eyes wide, but Faith waved a hand to get her to disappear again. For a second she’d forgotten someone else was in the room. Wonderful.
Another painful silence stretched on the line, and Faith wished like hell they were on a video call so she could see his expression right now. Their breakup had been devastating, although looking back on it now, she knew how unlikely it was for a pair of high school sweethearts to make it in the long run. But she still burned with regret over how things had ended, that her own immaturity and unchecked privilege had wounded him so badly. It made her stomach churn that they couldn’t even have a single conversation as adults without clashing.
Leo was apparently having the same thoughts. “This is exactly why us working together is a bad idea,” he finally said. He didn’t even take the bait on “Leonidas”; in the past he’d always grumbled at her when she used his full name.
“Good thing we’re not working together then,” she said briskly to hide her swirl of emotions. “Because I don’t appreciate being manipulated.”
He cleared his throat, and she pictured him sitting in the middle of that office that didn’t seem to fit him.
“I won’t if you won’t,” he finally said.
“What, manipulate you? I never—” She started to remind him that she hadn’t done a damn thing to him, but wasn’t that at the heart of their decade-old pain? At least she’d gotten to apologize to him again for that fucking essay. It didn’t erase how she’d treated him when she was eighteen, but she was glad she’d gotten to say it anyway. “Okay. Deal.”
A pause, then, “Deal.” He was gruff, but he sounded sincere—until he went and ruined it. “We’re still not friends though.”
Even though they’d gone all this time without speaking, the brutality of his statement was a punch in the gut.
Naturally, she punched back.
“Did you seriously call to remind me just how much we’re not friends? Or did you call to gloat about me not getting the funding I desperately need?”
“I”—he broke off with another of those strangled growls—“I wascallingwith a proposition to get your funding, and don’t you fucking dare make a sex reference this time.”
A new source of funding. Her stomach swooped, but the pulse of optimism wasn’t enough to keep her from joking. “Who, me?”
“Always you, Faith.”
Her breath stuttered to a halt at his words, and in that silence she heard the slightest creak, as if he was shifting in his chair. No way had he meant it in any romantic or possessive way. They weren’t evenfriends, after all.
