My eyes went across the room to her ex. I’ll kill him.
DALE
That bitch!How dare she make a fool out of me? She disappeared off the face of the earth after running out on me, and refused to take my calls, only to show up here tonight to pull this shit. I wasn’t prepared for her sudden appearance, so there was nothing I could do but sit there and take the hit.
I know she’s doing this purposely to embarrass me in front of my colleagues. No one knew that we had broken up; that was something I wanted to keep well-hidden until I came up with a plan. Being linked with her had brought me lots of benefits after all, and the rumors I’d spread about us getting married had only multiplied those benefits tenfold.
If word got around that we were no longer together, that was sure to affect my bottom line. Now would be a bad time to lose my job, even though I planned to leave soon for my own startup. Something I was relying on my connection with her for.
I endured the ribbing from the men and women I work with and avoided the questioning looks that came my way. I’m well aware of the danger if anyone figures out my relationship with Charlotte; our company is very strict when it comes to things like this, dating in-house is very heavily forbidden, not to mention the morality clause all executives have to sign.
That crack she made about Charlotte is sure to have people guessing, and that’s the last thing I need. How the hell was I supposed to keep pretending that the man beside her was just a friend, which is what I told them when asked?
In our time together, she never held my hand in public, claimed she hated all forms of PDA, but now she’s straddling some man in a restaurant, embarrassing me in front of my people. How could I not believe that it’s deliberate?
I folded my fists under the table before deciding to make a move. No one would believe that any self-respecting man would put up with this sort of disrespect. When one of my colleagues commented and asked what was going on with my girlfriend, I had no other choice but to save face.
I made my way over to their table and grabbed her wrist to pull her up from her seat when I felt a kick to my side that knocked the air out of me, even as I hit the floor hard. Before I could get to my feet, one of the man’s hands gripped my collar while the other plowed into my cheek.
“How dare you touch my woman? If you wanna die, just say so.” Who is this guy? And why is there so much venom in his gaze? How long have they known each other? That’s not the look of someone who had just met her. But I have never seen him before, and I’d met pretty much everyone who was close to her.
“You’ve been cheating on me, you bitch.” I’d barely gotten the words out before I felt that fist hit my cheek and tasted blood in my mouth. “Death, it is then.” Those were the last words I heard before I passed out.
JULIUS
I’m convinced that my woman is nuts. How else would you explain her behavior at the restaurant after I broke her ex’s face? When she first left her seat and came over to where I still had him pinned to the floor, I was sure that she was going to try to save him, which would’ve caused me to break his neck for real.
But instead, she lifted my hand, kicked him in the ribs, and accused him of using his face to batter my poor hand. He kicked up a fuss at this new assault, but there wasn’t much he could do since I still had him on the ground under my knee. Each time he opened his mouth to complain, she got another cheap shot in until the idiot stopped talking since no one was coming to his rescue.
If the situation weren’t so serious, I would’ve laughed. Things didn’t get much better when the cops showed up just seconds before her family and mine. She’d called them at some point, the family, and it looked like no one had anything better to do that day because they were all there, including her sister, the bossy one.
They needn’t have bothered, though, because the other patrons were only too happy to fill the cops in on whathappened. According to them, Dale had left his table and came over to ours to assault Jessica, and I just defended her.
At this point, Jessica’s wrist was bandaged from somewhere, and the waterworks were in full force. She was so good that she even had me fooled for a minute, and I was ready to go after him again until she winked at me, right in the middle of giving her statement through tears.
Dale tried to state his case, but each time he opened his mouth to speak, either her brothers or mine glared at him, and that shut him up. Since the cops had no interest in taking me in, it should’ve ended there, but her family insisted, and so did she, that she wanted to press charges.
Dinner was pretty much ruined, or so I thought, but her family and mine had other ideas as they asked for a bigger table so we could all eat together. It was the strangest damn thing. In the end, our meal was comped, everyone had a good time, and it was only after we left and were in the car that I realized no one even mentioned what happened throughout the evening.
“Why didn’t you just let it go?” That was the first thing I asked as soon as I had buckled her in and taken my place behind the wheel.
“Are you kidding? With his job, an arrest for domestic violence is like the death knell. Plus, the fact that he did it in front of his work colleagues, and you get bonus points.”
“What do you mean?” That sounded very suspicious. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she did it on purpose, but there’s no way she could’ve known what I was going to do to him. I took one look at her as I drove and knew that I was close to the truth.
“Jessie-Belle, did you just use me to beat up your ex?”
“I’m so offended by that question. How could I know that you two Neanderthals were going to throw hands in the middle of the people’s restaurant?” She batted her lashes, which was a dead giveaway.
I ran back through the evening in my head, from her sitting in my lap to his losing his mind. “Little opportunist, you used me.”
“No, I used the situation; there’s a difference.”
“If I hadn’t joined you this evening, what had you planned on doing?”
“There are no ifs in my vocabulary. A boss bitch is always ready to do what needs to be done.” I’m going to strangle her as soon as I get out of this car. “Looks like you can’t pet the kitty tonight with your broken wing.” She seemed very pleased with herself.
“I don’t need my hand to fuck you, Jessica.”
