The Woman from the Past (Grassi Framily)

Which was absolutely not going to happen. Not because I didn’t want it to. Despite my better judgment, I did.

But because there was no way in hell that a woman would fuck her boyfriend’s killer. Even if he hadn’t been the love of her life. Even if she’d let it slip to me that she’d been looking for a way to end things when he died.

So I did not just start driving toward the hotel like August suggested.

“So, where do you want to go?” I asked, looking over at her as she adjusted her seat.

“Where… oh,” she said, brows furrowing. “It’s so weird to have a choice,” she admitted.

“Try to pick somewhere out of this neighborhood, but somewhat close, so we don’t waste all your time on travel.”

“Okay. This is going to sound kind of ridiculous. But I want pizza.”

“Pizza?” I asked.

“Yes. Greasy, cheesy, fattening… pizza. Colin controls what I eat,” she reminded me, making my stomach tighten. “And I think he is sort of… punishing me for my coffee shop trips, even though he told me they were fine.”

“Punishing you how?” I asked, putting the car into drive because I needed to focus on something other than the anger starting to fester in my stomach.

“I hate fish,” she told me. “Like… everything about it. The smell, the texture, the taste. I hate it. I can barely choke it down. And he’s always served it because it is, I guess, healthier than other meats. But it was only maybe once a week. Interlaced with a lot of chicken or turkey. Lean stuff. But since I started working for his mom and coming to the coffee shop, he’s been serving it every single night.”

“He’s a fucking dick,” I said, sighing.

“He’s worried I’m going to gain weight from the sugary coffee,” she went on, making that anger start to spread. I could feel the flames lapping up through my chest and throat.

“So what if you do? It’s your body.”

“But in his mind, it’s not. It’s his. And his idea of me is in my high school cheerleader uniform. Which I am kind of shocked he doesn’t make me wear, actually.”

“No one’s body looks like it looked in high school,” I said.

“Oh, come on. Look at you,” she said, letting out a snorting laugh as she slammed her head back on the rest.

“I didn’t look like this in high school.”

“You totally did,” she admitted, making me glance over at her with raised brows.

“The only picture of you I could find anywhere was a black and white one from your high school yearbook. You looked like you. I mean, your face has sort of gotten more chiseled, but you seem about the same size.”

“Baby, I gained fifty pounds since high school,” I said, smiling.

“Of what? Muscle?” she shot back. “That’s not Colin’s worry. He wants me—“

“To look like an underage girl?” I cut her off.

“I never really thought of it that way, but, yeah, I guess. Huh,” she said, brows furrowing.

“Huh, what?”

“I wonder if that’s why he won’t let me drink either. At dinner, he always has a drink, but I get sparkling water.”

“He’s fantasizing you how you were as a, what, seventeen-year-old? He’s like thirty. It’s sick.”

“I never thought of it that way, but it’s possible.”

Maybe that was why he hadn’t seemed to touch her yet, either. He was living out the fantasy of her as the pure, untouchable, likely virgin, cheerleader from his teenaged years.

If that was the case, it was fucked up. But it also worked in her favor.