That was the sum of us now, and that made my chest hurt, just for a second; the tinge of pain flaring with intensity. He looked exactly the same. Handsome. Buff. So sure of himself.
“Noah, this is Jonah,” I kept going, the muscles under my fingers flexing some more.
I put the pieces together that made up Bianca’s call about a former Maio House member coming in like he owned the place. Of course Noah would do that. If anyone had a right to feel like they would always belong here, it would be him.
Even if that wasn’t the case anymore and never would be again for the shit he’d said and done.
“Her partner,” Jonah threw out suddenly, so quickly I didn’t get a chance to step back before he was up on his big feet, towering over me with all of an inch of a space between us as he thrust a hand toward Noah.
There he went calling me his partner again. How was a man this big so adorable?
Noah took in the hand being held out in his direction, and I watched him look up at the face that stood a couple inches taller, then back at the hand… and not do anything. Really? Really?
I went to fucking seven, or maybe eight, instantly.
“You’re not going to shake his hand?” I asked, anger settling right at the base of my fucking neck, making the skin on my arms prickle as this fucker still didn’t shake Jonah’s hand. He wasn’t my grandpa. He didn’t have a right to be this way, or any way, really.
“Why should I?” the man I hadn’t seen in almost a year asked, that face that was so handsome it had gotten one endorsement deal after another screwed up into an expression that was pretty much outraged. Outraged at what, I had no idea. What the hell did he have to be mad about? “This is him?”
Jonah’s hand, still in the air, curled into a fist and dropped.
And that only made my anger spike up even more.
“Is this who?”
“You know who.”
I stared into the face I had thought of as my friend for half my life. More than half my life. Into the face of the person I had been teenage-in-crush with, who hadn’t cared about me the same way.
I tried my best to grip onto that memory, onto that rope of love and vines and lifetime, and not lose my shit at the completely uncalled for aggravation on Noah’s face and in his voice. I only partially succeeded, not able to keep my tone civil. “You mean Mo’s dad?” I asked him, taking the words and owning them officially.
Noah’s cheeks puffed. They always did that when he was upset or angry. Or both.
“Then yeah, Jonah is Mo’s dad,” I confirmed, hanging onto those memories of this being someone I had loved, someone I still loved in a way, at least enough to try to do that. I didn’t want to go apeshit. I didn’t want to make this ugly. There was no reason for it. “You should have told someone you were coming to visit.”
He knew that wasn’t what I was implying and didn’t try to hide it as he tipped his chin up in Jonah’s direction. “They told me he was here.”
“He’s been here.”
“Now,” he tried to throw out like that would mean something.
I nodded because yeah. Now he was.
That was when Noah’s eyes flicked to Jonah once more, and his face went ruddy as he said, “Two years later. Or did you forget that?” He gestured with his chin toward me that time.
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” I said, losing hold of my temper just a little, just enough for the sharpness to come out. “None of this is any of your business anyway.”
I was going to kill someone, and that someone was either going to be Noah or it was going to be another member of the gym for having a big-ass mouth.
“Why are you playing stupid, Len? Since when do you forgive someone who let you have a baby by your fucking self?” He shook his head, his face getting redder and redder. “The girl I knew would’ve had his ass ten feet in the ground, not—”
Before I could ask if that was the same girl he’d been friends with ten years ago, another voice in the room spoke up.
“You and I have enough issues to talk about, mate,” Jonah said in a voice even more rough than I’d heard before. It was cold. Hard. And I liked it even more. “But you imply she’s stupid again, or you raise your voice that way one more time, and we’re going to have bigger issues to deal with. Understand?”
Noah said something, but I was too busy taking in the man standing beside me, firing off a glare that gave every other glare I had ever seen in my life a run for its money, and trying to comprehend that my sweet, sweet Jonah technically laid people out for a living too. I remembered reading once that he usually led his team in tackles, or something like that. Back in my brief stalker days.
“I don’t care who you are,” Jonah with a capital J said, responding to whatever it was that Noah had just spilled out. “That means nothing to me.”
“Who the fuck are you anyway?” Noah demanded.
I was over this.
“Stop.”
He glanced at me for a second, the words out of his mouth and into the air before maybe he even realized it. “I’m not talking to you right now.”
Was this fucker for real?
My shoulders went back, and if I’d had earrings on, I would have taken them off because I was about to beat the shit out of Noah. No one knew his weaknesses better than I did.
I’m not talking to you right now.
Mother. Fucker.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” I snapped, as beside me, Jonah said in that deadly, crazy voice, “Meet me outside, bro.”
That snapped me out of it.
Shock could do that to a person, I guess. How the hell had we gotten to the point where one of the two calmest males I’d ever met was telling people to meet them outside? Jonah? My shy Jonah who could barely speak to strangers? Whaaaaa?
I didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with me that I all of a sudden wanted to laugh. That comment alone had put this whole shit into perspective. What the hell was going on? What were we doing?
“You want to meet up outside? Let’s go,” Noah responded like the hotheaded dumbass he was.
I rolled my eyes that time because get the fuck out. I wanted to laugh. Noah would go straight to jail if he got into an unsanctioned fight. He would be suspended. Was he that dumb?
And Jonah had to be fifty pounds heavier than him right then, and maybe he had no official training, but he had amazing reflexes and he was strong in a way that wasn’t just for glamour muscles. His whole body was a machine. An expensive, well-maintained machine.
And I wanted to kiss the shit out of him for being one of the best things ever.
After I dealt with this dipshit.
“Stop being stupid, Noah,” I said, taking him in with what I was sure was disgust. “I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know why you’re doing it.” He choked like he knew the answer to those questions and didn’t like it. “But you need to stop. Don’t talk to him like that. Don’t even look at him either. And don’t you dare use that tone of voice on me. You have zero right to be over here being a fucking jackass, and I will call your mom and tell her what the hell you’re doing if you don’t quit making that face right now.”
His eyelid twitched as the words penetrated his brain.