Page 60 of Revenge Puck

My phone pings.

Juliette: I guess you’ll find out.

A low laugh rumbles out of my chest as I run my hand over the rough stubble on my jawline, a reminder that I should shave.

Declan takes another step closer, squaring his shoulders as if he’s trying to intimidate me.

“You got a problem?” I growl at him, mean-mugging him, dragging my eyes over his torso and finding him wanting.Besides, I’m too busy messing with his younger sister to pay him too much attention.

Oh, the irony…

So fucking good.

Seriously, I couldn’t have planned this better if I’d written a script.

I don’t break eye contact with him when I type.

Aaron: I guess I will.

Aaron: Here, let me shoot you my address. I don’t think your place is all that far from mine.

I hit send. Give Declan my best, placating smile.

“When you speak to your sister, tell her I said thanks for accepting my invite,” I say. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

He goes still.

“You’re fucking with me.”

My mind goes to the HR policy and how much trouble she’d be in if this dipshit decides to take me seriously and turn his own sister into corporate to keep her away from me.

“Yes.” I pause to be theatrical. “I’m fucking with you.”

He studies the phone in my hands as though, if he looked hard enough, he’d be able to read the name glowing on my screen.

“You better be.”

Again, my brows rise. “Yeah? Or what?”

We regard each other hotly, tempers flaring, daring the other to blink.

The locker-room noise fades to a dull roar—metal doors slamming, pads clanging to the ground, laughter, staff givingorders—none of it registering in my brain. The air has been vacuum-sealed around the two of us.

Declan breaks contact first.

“You so much as mess with her head,” he says, voice low enough for my ears only, “and I will end you.”

I tilt my head.

Consider him.

My lips curl into a smile. “You’re as cute as she is when you get riled.”

His nostrils flare. “She is nothing like me.”

It’s a direct hit, and it lands where it was supposed to: my ego. The part of me that has always doubted how loveable I am—and how worthy I am of anything that lasts.

“No,” I say quietly. “She isn’t.”