Page 104 of Bulletproof

“Can we get past it?”

“He stopped you or you stopped him?”

“There was no stopping,” I lied because no good could come from it, “because nothing started. It was just flirting.”

“Are you going to tell Detective Kage?”

“Of course.”

“Will he forgive you?”

Sam would be mad that I had been alone with Aaron Sutter, but he would forgive me because it had ended with me needing him. He always liked that.

“Yes.”

He nodded. “I forgive you, Jory, because we both know if you told Aaron right now that you wanted him back and wanted to go to bed with him, he would give me a nice settlement and put me on a plane tomorrow.”

“That’s bullshit,” I told him. “You are everything I wasn’t. Don’t kid yourself.”

“What?” he scoffed. “I allow myself to be kept, and you didn’t? I hardly think that qualifies.”

I squinted at him.

“You know, Hayes Fisher was looking at me this morning, and I saw him, you know, checking me out, but when I smiled at him, he apologized and said that I reminded him of someone else. Well, now I know who he meant.”

I didn’t want to argue. I wanted to eat. “I’m gonna have banana pancakes.”

The way he was looking at me, like I was nuts, made me smile.

Back at the table, I thanked the server for the coffee and guava juice she brought me. It was strange; I had Aaron on my right and Hayes on my left.

“So, Jory,” Burke Ellis said, “why did you leave Synergy?”

“I was fired,” I said, smiling at him.

He looked horrified. “Oh.”

“It’s okay. I had to figure some things out, and you gotta take the good with the bad, you know?”

“I do know,” he said with a nod, eyes on mine.

I ate and ate, and when I was still eating, Jaden asked if I was bottomless.

“Dane thinks I have a tapeworm.” I smiled at him.

“Is Dane your boyfriend?” Burke asked me.

“My brother,” I said with my mouth full.

“His brother is Dane Harcourt,” Aaron supplied. “The architect.”

“Oh my God, are you kidding?” Burke turned to look at Hayes. “Haven’t you been waiting for, like, six months to see that man?”

He nodded. “Yes, I have, and we had breakfast together not too long ago, he and I, because of Jory.”

“Oh, how wonderful.”

“Yes, it was,” Hayes agreed, hand on my back. “You’re going to go into a food coma, you know.”