“Evie?” she said, and I looked over to her. Zoe’s eyes were glossy as they searched mine. “Do you . . . Do you hate me now?”
My breath caught. “I don’t hate you.” And that was the truth. “I don’t think I’m even mad at you. I was. A lot. I’m just . . . I don’t know. My head is in a thousand places. I’m irritated one second and just confused the next and—” I cut myself off. “I don’t hate you.”
Zoe’s shoulders relaxed. “Thank God, because I was prepared to, I don’t know, make you dinner in order to beg for your forgiveness.”
My nose wrinkled. “I don’t think that would work. You can’t even pop popcorn.”
She laughed, the sound a little lighter. “That’s true. I would get Luc to cook it.”
Surprise flickered through me. “Luc can cook?”
Zoe nodded.
“Is there anything he can’t do?”
That faint grin appeared again. “Not many things.”
“Wow,” I murmured. “Are you going to tell Heidi the truth now?”
She nodded. “I think so. There’s no point keeping what I am secret. I don’t think we should tell James, though. I mean, we’d have to explain exactly what I am, and as I’m sure Luc has told you, Origins aren’t a known thing.”
“He did.” I didn’t think James would care or breathe a word of it, but I trusted Zoe on this. “Does Emery know . . . about me?”
“She does,” she told me. “I don’t know if she knows all the details, but she knows you’re important to Luc.”
That statement made me all squirmy, so I looked away.
Zoe was quiet for a moment. “You and Luc doing okay?”
I snorted. “I don’t know about that.” In the next second, I felt his mouth against mine again, his chest pressing down, his hips . . . Oh God, I needed help, like, therapy - until - I - was - thirty kind of help. “Luc and I aren’t anything.”
“Huh.” Zoe bent over, picking something off the floor. “Then I guess Luc’s shirt just got left on the floor via dark magic.”
I froze. Sure as hell, she was holding the shirt Luc had been wearing. “I . . .” I blinked. “This is his apartment. He would have clothes lying around.”
She widened her eyes and cocked her head to the side. “So he came home last night with his shirt on, stayed in here with you, took his shirt off for reasons, and then stormed out of said home last night without a shirt.” She waited a moment. “Because, yeah, I saw him shirtless . . . and his pants half unbuttoned, and while I admired the view, it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting to see.”
“I . . . I don’t know what to say about that,” I said lamely.
She dropped the shirt on the bed and then crossed one long leg over the other. “I heard you guys last night.”
My face burned. I felt it. It was on fire, as if the sun had kissed my cheeks. She heard us?
Her brows flew up. “I heard you guys arguing, but I’m assuming you think I heard something else. Something far more interesting than the random bits and pieces I heard across the hall. What happened last night?”
I wanted the bed to swallow me whole. “I guess if I said ‘nothing,’ you wouldn’t believe me?”
“Unless nothing involved Luc getting naked.”
“Oh my God,” I groaned, tipping over onto my side. “Luc wasn’t naked. Not completely. He just had his shirt off and I—” I rolled over, face-planting onto the bed. “I had my shirt off . . . and yeah.”
Zoe didn’t respond for a long moment and then she said, “Did you guys . . . ?”
“Do it?” My voice was muffled and my arms were limp at my sides. “No, we didn’t do it. He stopped, saying he couldn’t.”
“He couldn’t . . . ?”
“It sure seemed . . . and felt like he could, but it was a mistake. Seriously.” I flopped my limp arms. “I initiated it, because I started to think about everything, and I just . . . I just didn’t want to think anymore.”
“And making out with Luc comes into play how?”
I flopped again. “Because I wasn’t thinking . . .”
“Oh.” Zoe went quiet.
“That’s bad, isn’t it?”
She nudged my dead arm. “Well, I mean, if that was the only reason why you initiated it. No judgment, but if he was . . . um, feeling it more, he probably didn’t want to be, you know, used as a distraction.”
“Him being used? Me using him?” I lifted my head. “Him feeling it more? He stopped, Zoe. And left—left the room like it was on fire.”
“Maybe because he’s a good guy?”
I looked at her. “For real?”
Her lips pursed. “Luc is . . . different. He’s not someone anyone wants pissed off at them, but he is . . . He is a good guy.”