He spewed a few more curses as the girl cried out, “Who the hell is that?!”

I frowned when I heard the snippy tone. She had every right to be pissed. I couldn’t fault her.

She continued, “You said we had the house to ourselves. Who is this girl?”

“It’s no one.” His voice faded for a second. “Here. Put this on, Chandra.”

She growled at him.

“Chandra.”

“You owe me for this,” she snapped at him.

I waited, still against the wall with my hand over my eyes. I breathed in and out with a brief hope that maybe he’d forget I was there and go after her. This was too awkward.

“You can look now.”

He hadn’t.

The awkwardness lifted a notch. I could tell he was pissed.

My hands didn’t move. “Are you dressed?”

“Yes.” He sounded exhausted and I peeked. There were bags underneath his eyes as he sat on the couch, leaning forward on his knees. He wiped a hand over his face and regarded me with narrowed eyes. “You’re looking for Jesse?”

I nodded.

His head dropped to his hands and his shoulders bunched together. He was still shirtless, but his shorts rode farther up his thigh, his very manly thigh. As he didn’t say anything for a moment, my eyes roamed over him. I couldn’t help it. He had filled out since the last time I saw him, around nine months ago.

“You look good,” I remarked lightly as I perched on the end of the sectional.

“We’ve been training like crazy.” His head lifted and he grimaced, rubbing a hand over his jaw. It clenched under the movement.

I searched for where the girl might’ve gone. “Who was that?”

“No one.”

From the soft tone of regret, I grimaced again. “That wasn’t ‘no one’. That was someone. Is the infamous Cord Tatum off the market?” I teased, “I know someone who goes to school an hour away that’ll be disappointed.”

“Who?”

“Marissa.” I frowned. He didn’t know that?

“Oh. Her.”

And judging by how he said “her,” I knew Cord Tatum had definitely moved on. I took notice. This was a new guy in front of me.

“Jesse’s not here.”

“I gathered.”

“Yeah.” His head turned away. He continued to rub at his jaw, as if mulling over some problem in his head.

I glanced at my lap, unsure what to say. I didn’t know this was how it would go down. When Zala gave me Jesse’s address, I had every intention of marching in and giving him an earful. He knew secrets about Ethan’s death and hadn’t returned any of my calls. I just got a letter that gave me the ‘fuck off’ sentiments from my parents. I had no intention of taking another one from Jesse. I was primed and ready to tell him how it would be since I was going to be attending the same university.

All of that vanished when I saw the naked chick. A whole different form of rage had balled in my stomach, but it shriveled up. I swallowed it down and bit my lip as I contemplated how many other forms of apology I could utter to Cord.

“Look,” I began, smoothing my hand down my pants. “It’s obvious that I interrupted something special—”

“No, you didn’t.” He stood abruptly.

I froze from the sudden movement, but he left the room and hollered, “Come on.”

Sliding off the couch, I trailed behind him and he led the way into one of the biggest kitchens I would ever see in my life. It was half the size of a banquet hall, but then I had to roll my eyes. Should I have expected otherwise? Zala told me that his father bought this house for Jesse. Of course, it would be grandiose. His dad was a movie producer and a jerk.

Cord opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of wine. “You want some?”

I hesitated. Maybe, but I still needed to move into my dorm room.

He flashed me a grin.

My shoulders loosened. There was the cocky son-of-a-bitch Cord Tatum. I reached for one of the glasses that hung from a cupboard and slid it across the counter. “Fill her up.”

He chuckled as he did. Then he topped off his own glass. “Instead of talking about the chickadee that was just here, why don’t we talk about you?” He took up his glass and moved towards the large table that could’ve sat thirty people. He plopped down in a chair and motioned to another. As I sat, he asked, “You were here to see Jesse?”

Oh goodness.

As I sat, I needed to remember who this guy was. He charmed his way into Marissa’s pants—who was I kidding? She charmed her way into his after trying to charm her way into Jesse’s pants. With a scowl on my face, I took a big gulp of the wine. I set the glass back down, roughly, as I scowled at him. “Why’d you sleep with Marissa?”

His eyebrows shot up, but he schooled his face. I had to give him points for that. Not too much shock got through before he contained himself and asked, in a soft murmur, “What do you mean?”

I scoffed, drinking more of my wine. “Don’t act like I’m stupid. I know she was calling Jesse and you took up the cause.” The whole thing settled on the bottom of my gut in a bad way. A pang seared through me. She’d been my friend and she had been hoping to get Jesse while she knew of our history. It hurt. It hurt a lot.

He leaned forward with his arms resting on the table. His tone was gentle, “Look, Marissa was stupid, okay? I don’t know how you two are right now, but take it from me. She was a stupid girl. She was selfish.”