He and I werefriends.
I'd never struggled with self-consciousness or comparing myself to other women before. I'd always been proud of who and what I was. But this situation had fucking wrecked me.
There was something in her hand. I studied it openly.
It was a ring.
A gold wedding ring, with a diamond in the center of it. Most immortals didn't even exchange rings.He had to have loved her enough to know she cared about that kind of thing to even bother buying it for her.
"I finally found it!" Gwen exclaimed, holding it out toward him. "Simon hid it in one of hisshoes. I've been going through his closet for days."
"What an asshole." Jonah took the ring and inspected it, his lips curving upward.
Nope.
I wasn't doing this.
Not without killing one or both of them.
I hit Jonah with a burst of my magic, and he swore as he released my arm with a jerk backward.
"Don't have sex until I'm out of earshot!" I yelled over my shoulder, sprinting my heartout."And be careful with the bark against your ass!"
Maybe I'd get lucky and end up too far away by the time they were done with... whatever the hell they were doing.
Jonah caughtup to me about eight minutes later.
"Wow. Must've been some really great sex if you're already done," I drawled.
He rolled his eyes at me again.
"If you want to be with her, just be with her," I said. "Immortality goes by faster than you'd think."
"It's hard to let go of the past," he admitted.
Those were among the truest words I'd ever heard. He wasn't the only one who hadn't moved on.
I had to get over Niall though. There was no other choice.
I didn't want this situation with Jonah to be my life. My fuckingfated mate bond, which he still didn’t know about.
But what else was I supposed to do? Abduct the man and force him to be mine? As much as I appreciated abduction in the right situation, this wasn't one of those. I knew that too well to even bother considering it.
I gave Jonah one of my earbuds, and we listened to our boring audiobook as we ran together.
Unfortunately, that was the best part of my morning.
two
LIV
When I madeit back to my car, I was insanely sweaty, drenched with rain, and biting my cheek to fight against the awful pain in my feet.
Gwen was leaning up against the driver's side door of my red Ferrari.
My murderous imagination was too worn out after the run to consider any of the many ways I could kill her at the moment.
God, she was gorgeous.
