Jack was moping. Not that he would admit it. As far as he was concerned, he was behaving perfectly rationally. Holing up in his apartment for the rest of the weekend was perfectly fine. Other people did it all the time. Besides, he was working. He had one final article to write for The Playbook, and then he had to do a live stream as JJ and the Kid for his other YouTube channel. Carter had managed to reschedule the interview with Thomas Blayne, but it wasn’t for another month. Carter was pissed about it, but Jack didn’t really care. It was extenuating circumstances and really, this was all Carter’s fault. All of it, not just the missed interview. The whole fucking mess Jack now found himself in could be laid at the feet of Carter. If he hadn’t bought Dianna into the building, Jack wouldn’t be sitting in his apartment in the middle of the night nursing a tumbler of scotch and pretending he didn’t have a broken heart. Fucking Carter. He said he’d done a thorough background check.
Fran put the brush down and put her hands on her hips. “I didn’t want to say anything before,” Fran said, “but this has gone on long enough. You need to stop this. You hurt your ankle two years ago. Your ankle. And now you can’t do your own hair? How does that even work? How can your injured ankle stop you from lifting your arms to brush your hair? I know you’ve always believed we give your brother more attention than we give you, but this is an extreme way to get us to notice you, Dianna.” “You think I’m doing this to get attention?” Dianna asked, although she already knew it was the truth. Hadn’t she always known her mother didn’t believe her diagnosis? “That fibromyalgia-whatever nonsense your doctor was talking about is not even a real thing. It’s all in your head and he’s just humouring you. Half those drugs he’s got you on are probably nothing more than those sugar pill things they give people.” “Placebo,” Dianna mumbled. “They’re called placebos and you think my doctor is
“Maria. Help,” Diana said as she approached her assistant’s desk. Maria looked up and frowned. “What are you doing here?” “I have that interview this morning,” Dianna replied. “I thought it was a phone interview?” Dianna shook her head. “No, the journalist is coming here, so I need you to help me.” “What the hell happened to your hair?” Dianna groaned as she led the way into her office. “I asked my mother to come over and help me get ready and then we got into a fight and I asked her to leave before she could finish my hair.” “O-kay,” Maria said slowly, “but that doesn’t explain all this.” Maria waved her hand around in front of Dianna. “Well, let’s see if I can explain it to you. My arms don’t want to lift past my shoulders today so I had to sit on the toilet with my head between my knees just so I could get it into a messy bun.” “Hun, that’s not a messy bun, that’s…I don’t even know what to call that.” “Can you just help me fix it? Please? I already have one man
“What’s going on with you?” Finn whispered, leaning over to Jack so the others in the meeting couldn’t hear. “Is kara causing trouble again?” Jack shook his head. “Not kara.” “Okay, so what’s going on? You haven’t been this cranky for weeks.” “Nothing,” Jack replied. “Just wish Carter would shut up so I can do some actual work.” “You know what meeting days are like,” Finn replied, not letting the matter drop. “Something else is definitely going on.” “Do you have something you’d like to share with the class?” Carter asked, looking at Jack. Jack opened his mouth to hurl an insult at Carter and then closed it again when he saw the rest of the team watching him. He couldn’t get into this here with Carter. Not in front of all these people. He might be pissed off with Dianna, but he would never air her dirty laundry in front of everyone. Jack waved his hand at Carter to go on and turned away from Finn so his friend couldn’t draw him into another conversation and draw Carter’s
“This final article for Paper It’s shit. I am not going to put it up on the site.” “What are you talking about?” “Jack, this article reads like someone else wrote it. It doesn’t match up with any of the other posts and it doesn’t mention Dianna by name at all.” “I wrote nothing bad about the game or Black “No, but it is not exactly the glowing endorsement all the others are. Did you piss Dianna off again? Did the two of you get into a fight?” “Not a fight, no,” Jack said slowly. “But I found something out about her I thought you should have already known. In fact, if your background check into her was so thorough, then you never would have let her move into the building.” Carter frowned at Jack. “What the hell are you talking about? Dianna is squeaky clean. We couldn’t ask for a better tenant.” Jack snorted. “Yeah, if you think an addict is a good tenant.” “An addict?” Carter looked at Jack like he just sprouted a second head. “What the fuck are
Jack barely slept. He kept replaying conversations he’d had with Kei Ren—Dianna. How did he not know? He should have known, shouldn’t he? All the times she complained about her neighbor—which he now knew was him—should have tipped him off. They had been playing online together since before Dianna moved into the building, but he still felt he should have known that his gaming partner lived right across the hall. It was almost— almost —another betrayal, but she didn’t know he was JJ from JJ and the Kid. She would never have been so open with him if she had known, especially not when they still hated each other IRL. And then there was the conversation they’d had recently when she told him she had an illness and how it had caused her last partner to leave. He’d encouraged her to be truthful with her new partner, assuring her that if he loved her, he wouldn’t run away. But Jack had run away. He’d done exactly what she was afraid he’d do. Jack had taken one look at her on the floor and im
“You bastard,” Jack said with a shake of his head. “Was that some sort of test?” “I wanted to make sure you were really in love with her and this wasn’t your rescuer complex coming out.” “I don’t have a rescuer complex,” Jack snorted. “Oh, you absolutely do, but I can see that this isn’t that. You really have fallen in love with Dianna.” “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Jack said with an exasperated huff. “So how do I fix this?” “Talk to her,” Finn said. “Talk to her?” “Maybe take chocolate.” “So she can throw it at me?” Finn grinned. “Maybe make sure they’re all soft centers.”They started coming as soon as she got to work, and then every fifteen minutes after that. Dianna had thought the tart debacle had been bad enough, but this was getting ridiculous. It wasn’t as if she could turn them away. They were Ashby Chocolates after all. No one sent back an Ashby Chocolates gift, especially not the soft-centered ones. Besides, each one was a different letter
“Jack,” Dianna said cautiously. His eyes ate her up greedily. She looked better than she had the last time he saw her and a hell of a lot better than when he found her on her bathroom floor. She looked better, but not There were still dark smudges under her eyes and she stood stiffly as if she were bracing herself. But that could be because he was in the office and he was the last person she wanted to see. “Take a seat, Dianna,” Mason said. Jack had forgotten Mason was even in the room, and by the little jolt that went through Dianna, she hadn’t seen him either. Dianna crossed the office and took a seat. Jack waited for her before he also took a seat. Mason knew why Jack was there. He knew Jack was trying to make up for his epic failure with Dianna. This was Mason’s way of trying to help Jack, although getting called into his office was terrifying. Jack couldn’t exactly pinpoint what made Mason so scary; there was just an air about him that let you know he was the alpha in the