“Hi,” his voice softens but then eyes quickly narrow as if it’s all clicking. Recognition dawns, spreading across his face like the sunrise, followed by an annoyingly wide grin before he drops my hand, cross his arms over his chest and tilts his head to the ceiling, laughing deeply.
“W-why… why are you laughing?” I ask. I’m completely off my game here and feel like I’m spiraling.
“Because” he says, stepping closer, his grin turning dangerously wolfish, “I never thought I’d get to meet the woman who ended my cousin’s relationship.”
“What? Yourcousin? What are you talking about?”
He holds out his hand like he’s introducing himself at some fancy networking event. “Hi, I’m GabrielCarpenter. Cousin to Roman Carpenter. My co-owner at Carpenter Cousin’s Construction.”
“No,” my heart races faster. Is it possible to have a heart attack from a case of mistaken identity? “No, you’re not. Your… your name is Roman.”
He chuckles again. “Pretty sure I know my own name.”
“No,” I say, panic bubbling in my chest. “You’re Roman!” I must sound deranged. My voice cracks on the name I thought was his. I wet my lips, trying to make sense of how this could happen.
“As I said, Roman’s my cousin,” he replies smoothly, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “And so is Natasha.”
“I… I don’t understand.”
He leans in, close enough that I can smell him—leather and spice and pure, unfiltered temptation. That scent had been my undoing in the back of that hallway, and now it’s got its hands wrapped around my throat, cutting off my air like his hand had once done.
“You kissed me in that hallway,” he whispers, his voice low and intimate, “like you meant it. And then you told his girlfriend it was Roman you kissed. You were wrong. It wasme you kissed.” His breath brushes against my skin, igniting memories I’ve tried to bury. Because in those memories, he was a cheater and ajob.
“Natasha is my cousin. Her older brother is Roman. Funny shenever mentioned that to you, but Roman’s got a bit of a reputation so I’m assuming she was trying to spare you from getting hit on.”
This can’t be the case. How did I never learn Natasha’s last name? I guess because I’ve only known her for a few weeks, and most of that time has been spent running past each other, bussing tables and making drinks. You would think I would have looked at the lease paperwork I signed more closely but I was in a rush, and it wasn’t all that legal. I needed to get out of my grandmother’s home, I didn’t think to ask whether her brother was the man I videotaped without his consent in the back of a bar.
“It was me whose cock you squeezed. Me who had you moaning against my open mouth. Me. Not Roman.”
I stagger back as he straightens, smug and composed, like he didn’t just detonate a bomb in my brain. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet, retrieves his driver’s license and then hands it to me with the kind of flourish that screamscheckmate.
Ever since my ex-husband surprised me with divorce papers and a pregnant mistress on the same afternoon, I've had a complicated relationship with the unexpected.
I used to love not knowing. The anticipation of birthdays, of holidays, of wondering whether this would finally be the year he'd pull something together for me the way I always did for him. I'd build it up quietly in my head, talk myself into believing it was coming, and then talk myself back down when it didn't. He did that to me enough times that I stopped building it up at all. And then, when I'd finally made my peace with small and predictable and safe, he went and blew the whole thing apart anyway. Just not in any of the directions I'd been bracing for.
He ruined surprises for me. Thoroughly and permanently.
So now I plan. I map out every reasonable scenario before I walk into a room. I run contingencies. I try to account for the variables I can't control by controlling everything I can, even knowing, somewhere in the back of my mind, that the more tightly you grip a plan the less it actually protects you. Predictability is an illusion I've chosen to maintain because the alternative is standing exactly where I'm standing right now.
Completely blindsided. Skin crawling. Not a single contingency plan in sight. I’m fucked.
Sure enough, staring back at me on the shiny picture reflecting against the bar lights is Gabriel Alan Carpenter. The bastard even looks good in his DMV photo, which should be illegal. The lighting in those offices is harsh and unforgiving. I look like one of those sick Victorian children from the dark ages in mine.
“Okay,” I manage to choke out, forcing a laugh that’s as brittle as glass. “Well, this is… super awkward, so I’ll just go ahead and see myself out—”
“Sit your ass down,” he growls, taking his license out of my grip and sliding it into his pocket.
My eyes go wide. “Um, what did you just say?”
“Sit your goddamn ass down back in the chair, Alessia,” he repeats.
My name rolls off his tongue with a perfect accent that I feel down in my toes and across my chest. No one calls me Alessia except for my grandmother, I’ve always been Aly to the people in my life. Even to my ex I was Aly or Aly Cat. Something about the way Gabriel says it is beautiful.
He glares at me, then tips his head back, eyes on the ceiling like he’s having a private conversation with God himself.
“Why?” He mutters under his breath. Then, as if on cue, he levels me with another pointed, burning look. “Sit down. Please.”
“Why should I?” I shoot back, genuinely baffled. I figured he’d be halfway out the door by now.
