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I didn’t expect him to do that anyway.

At least I know you’re not shutting me out completely.

His response took longer—long enough for my stomach to tighten before the screen finally changed.

HORNY DEVIL Don’t read more into it than what it is, Theo. We’re still done.

The words stung, but not enough to make me stop.

We’ll see.

Again, he left me on read, but whatever. I was in this for the long haul. If Rhodes thought telling me no once—or twenty times—was enough to convince me everything between us had meant nothing, then apparently he hadn’t learned nearly enough about me during the last ten months. He called me a brat for a reason.

“Is that your girlfriend?” Jude asked. My attention snapped away from my phone.

“Not my girlfriend,” I said a little too quickly. What the hell would Rhodes think of that? His brother was referring to him as my girlfriend without having the slightest clue who he was actually talking about.

Was this fucked up? I was lying beside my best friend while he actively encouraged me to win back someone he thought was a mystery woman. Except that mystery woman was his older brother.

Yeah, it was fucked up.

“Not yet,” he replied confidently. With another dramatic groan, Jude abandoned whatever remained of his dignity and crawled into bed beside me, wedging himself between me and the wall. We had absolutely no business fitting in a twin-sized mattress, but we'd done this often enough that neither of us seemed particularly bothered by the logistics anymore. “You’ll win her back.”

“I don’t know.” The confidence I’d had while texting Rhodes disappeared surprisingly fast when I had to say any of it aloud. I hugged the phone facedown against my chest. Rhodes probably wouldn’t message again, but on the off chance he did, I didn’t need Jude seeing horny devil light up my screen and asking questions I couldn’t answer.

“She’s an idiot if she doesn’t.”

“Thanks.”

“Question,” Jude whispered as he lifted his arm slightly. I glanced at him, raising a brow. “Is this your first girlfriend? Because I’ve never heard you talk about anyone before this.”

My ears burned hot. I never talked about this shit with Jude. I listened to him talk about it constantly—hookups, dates, people he thought were hot, people who thought he was hot, which was apparently half the population. I usually contributed absolutely nothing. Before Rhodes, there’d been no one besides one sloppy kiss with a guy. That was it.

I was in new territory here.

“You know, it’s okay, right?” he continued. “I kind of knew.”

“Considering you do all the dating talk,” I retorted. His reassurance did nothing to quell my embarrassment. Logically, I knew there wasn’t some universal timeline for this shit. But logic didn’t stop me from feeling like I’d missed some developmental milestone everyone else had breezed through years ago.

“Don’t get defensive with me.”

“Hard not to. You’ve been doing this shit forever,” I muttered.

“Two years maybe,” he shot back. Smirking, he added, “It took a while for the magic tongue to get started.”

“Jesus fuck.” I rolled my eyes.

“All I’m saying is, you’re not late to the game,” Jude continued. “Don’t let the loud assholes make you feel like you’re late to the game. I guarantee you’re doing better than most.”

There was enough sincerity beneath the bullshit that I stopped bracing quite so hard.

“You’re one of those loud as fuck assholes,” I teased.

“Yeah, I am.” He smirked. “And I guarantee you’re doing better than me. I’ve never dated anyone.”

“Yeah, you have.” Right? I frowned. He had to have dated someone. Jude had spent two years behaving like the human personification of a dating app.

“Nope,” Jude said. “I’ve hooked up with so—”