Cross

“I told you.” Walker kicks back on the sofa in his living room with a look I’d like to knock off his face. While I’m ninety-five percent sure I could take him, the five percent isn’t a risk I want to take tonight. “If they wanna go, let ’em go.”

“This is such bullshit,” I spit out, grabbing a beer off the coffee table. “I didn’t do anything with Megan fucking McCarter. Not at any point in my life have I ever even touched her.”

“I have.” He grins. “But good choice not to—it’s not worth it.”

Every inch of my skin itches. It’s uncomfortable, making me feel like I need to move, to run, to rip something to shreds.

“I’m caught between a rock and a hard place,” I comment, more to the universe as a whole rather than to Walker specifically. “As pissed as I am right now, I know she’s the girl I was meant to have. If I don’t go after her, I’ll lose her, but if I do, doesn’t that make me look guilty? Or like a pussy? Or set the stage for a power vacuum in our relationship?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? That’s all you got?”

He turns off the football game and sighs. “Look, man, I’m not the best guy to go to for relationship advice…obviously.”

“You’re all I fucking have right now.”

“Oh, so I was the last resort?”

“No, Lance was the last resort, but he’s fucking some nurse he met on a dating app. You are whatever falls after that.”

Walker laughs. “You’re not as dumb as I thought you were.”

“Here’s the difference between my situation and yours,” I tell him, bending forward and resting my elbows on my knees. “You don’t care. I love her.”

“Love is such an overrated thing, Cross. What’s it really mean, anyway? How long does it last? Too many variables to make decisions based on love.”

“Maybe I don’t know what it is.”

“Know what what is?” Peck asks as he rounds the corner. “By the way, the alternator is changed on the SUV in the shop.”

“Do you knock?” Walker asks. “But good work on the SUV.”

“No, and thanks. Now, what are we talking about? You look so serious.”

I take a minute to fill Peck in, getting more irritated as I go. Before I’m finished, I see he’s side-eyeing Walker.

“First of all, whatever that jackass has told you, ignore it—all of it,” Peck says.

Walker shrugs. “He asked.”

“Second of all, you need to head that way now and apologize.”

“Me?” I bark. “I didn’t do anything.”

“And do you really want the rest of your life messed up because you were so worried about your ego that you wouldn’t apologize?”

I snort. “It’s not ego, it’s principle.”

“You can call it whatever you want, it’s the same damn thing. Either you want to feel like you have some high and mighty set of principles, which we all know you don’t, or you can get the girl—your pick. I’d pick her, because she’s really hot.”

Narrowing my eyes, I watch Peck laugh.

“Nah, not really because she’s hot, because she’s nice. She’s sweet. She gave you a second chance,” he throws in. When I don’t react, he stands. “Do what you want, but don’t come a-cryin’ to me when she’s at the bar with someone else.”

“I’ll kill them,” I snarl.

“Then avoid prison and go apologize.”

He tells Walker something about a transmission, but I can’t hear it over the roar of blood over my ears. Walker turns the television back on, but I can’t figure out who has the ball or what the score is because I’m mulling over Peck’s advice.

The thought of going home and never having her in my kitchen, in my bed, on my sofa again twists me up so bad I don’t even want to go. My phone sits in my pocket, and its failure to ring or buzz with a call or text from her hurts my heart.

I sit for a few more long minutes before I just can’t sit any longer. “I’m gonna go,” I tell Walker, standing. “May as well get a workout in since all I want to do is hit something.”

Walker doesn’t even look up. “Tell Kallie I said hi.”