Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men 9)

e fight. That must’ve been where this had come from.

I didn’t know why, but seeing his blood on me broke me. I sat down on top of the sock pile, buried my face in my hands and proceeded to cry.

“Oh, honey.” Sasha sat next to me, and Tyla took my other side. Their arms wrapped around me and held me close as they rocked me back and forth.

“What did that bastard do to you?” Tyla demanded.

I shook my head and wiped at my tears. “No. Colton didn’t do anything wrong. He’s perfect. He’s so fucking amazing; he’s the best man I’ve ever known. And I’m just so scared because it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be fun and done, get it out of our system and never talk to each other again. But he was just so amazing. And then he brought me candy when I was on my period and told me his secrets and listened to mine and got into a fight with some jackass who tried to grab my breasts, and I just…I don’t know. I’ve never felt anything this big for a guy before, except I’m not supposed to. He didn’t want his brother to know, I didn’t want my dad to find out. But then he made it sound like he wanted more tonight, and I want more too. I kind of want everyone to know he’s mine, and if they have a problem with it, they can just go fuck themselves.”

I exhaled a big long breath after unloading all that, my chest heaving and eyes still sprouting tears. I was pretty much a disaster, and both my roommates were staring at me as if I’d lost my mind, which I think I had.

Finally, Sasha lifted her eyebrows and blew out a breath. “Okay, maybe you should start from the beginning. Whose blood is on you?”

My shoulders fell. “I think I need to start a lot further back than that.”

“That’s fine.” Tyla nodded encouragingly. “How far back are we talking?”

“About a year,” I confessed. “Pretty much a week or two after I started working at the bar. Brandt was my trainer, and I thought he was cool.” I shrugged. “He is cool. The guy has every quality a girl would want in a man, so I thought, why not. He fit the mold I had set in my brain for the perfect guy. But the very night I was going to ask him out, his brother stopped by.”

“And it was like destiny,” Sasha tried to fill in for me, as she pressed her hands to her chest dramatically.

I blinked at her before saying, “No. He annoyed the hell out of me. He was loud and obnoxious and so arrogantly inappropriate, I pretty much wanted to smack him. But then he left, and I found myself sending glances toward the door as if I was looking for him to return or something. It was freaky, so freaky that I went ahead and asked Brandt out because, I don’t know...nothing was freaky or scarily intense with Brandt. But then that bombed, and I have to say, I wasn’t really that disappointed. I was just sad, sad because he’d finally settled with his soul mate, and you’d started seeing Theo.”

I pointed to Tyla before glancing at Sasha. “And you’ve always had Chad. I just felt so alone. The only time I ever felt truly alive was when Colton stopped by to see Brandt at the bar. I think he got a kick out of pissing me off because the more I reacted the more he flirted. After a while, I realized I was getting a kick out of his visits too. We had this bizarre game of him pursuing me relentlessly while I told him to fuck off. But nothing ever came of it. Not until the night of Brandt’s wedding.”

Tyla gasped and waved her hands excitedly. “What, girl, what? You’ve been holding out on us. I knew it! What happened at that wedding? This is going to be juicy, isn’t it? Ooh, this better be fucking juicy as hell.”

Oh, it was juicy all right.

“I was extra depressed,” I admitted. “And bitter because I felt so alone. I was reflecting on how things could’ve ended up if Brandt and I had actually worked out when the best man sat down at my table.”

“Colton was the best man?” Sasha guessed, grinning wide. “Mmm, are you telling us you made it with the best man at your crush’s wedding, and he also happened to be the groom’s brother? Holy shit, you naughty woman. I am so impressed.”

When she hugged me, I burst out laughing. “It felt really, really wrong. We were this close to having sex.” I put a centimeter of space between my thumb and index finger. “And I mean this close. But then I blurted out something about loving Brandt, and he took off and—”

“You did what?” Tyla exploded. “Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know!” I wailed. “I was drunk and still moody and depressed from not having anyone. I think I’d been trying to convince myself all day that I still liked him. So when I hooked up with Colton, it just came out. It felt like he was pissed at me forever over that, too.”

I continued to tell them about everything that had happened since then.

Meanwhile, Tyla found the stash of candy Colton had bought me the night before—dear Jesus, had that only been the night before?—and the three of us tore into it while I spilled everything, and I mean everything.

When I got to the part about the bitchy gossipy girls at the restaurant, the drunk asshole who’d harassed us, and the condescending paramedic, Tyla clutched her face in her hands and moaned, “Then you came home to Theo and his big, stupid fat mouth. JuJu, I am so sorry. Will you please forgive me?”

I shook my head. “There’s nothing to forgive. You weren’t the one who said anything.”

“I know, but…he’s my boyfriend. My responsibility. I should’ve…I…” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t think he and I are going to make it.”

“What?” Sasha screeched. She seemed more startled to hear this than I did.

“He always flirts with other girls,” Tyla said. “Like right in front of me, usually when I’m trying to tell him about my day. He never pays attention when I talk to him, and some of the cracks he’s said about my friends or things I like are really starting to bother me.”

“What’s he said about me?” Sasha had to know.

Tyla seemed to wilt under our gazes. “You don’t even want to know.”

Sasha’s mouth dropped open with a gasp. A second later, she said, “Okay, you can dump his worthless ass.”