You Don't Know Me: A Stand-Alone New Adult Romance by Faleena Hopkins Page B

meal. “You want me to meet your mom tonight?” I say, repeating the request for her benefit, and her jaw drops while I slap her legs to get the crazy out of me. “Hang on. I’m getting another call.” I hit mute, exclaiming wildly, “I don’t want to meet their mother! My mother slept with her husband!”
    “And then there’s the part where you’re on the East coast,” Jenna flatly adds.
    “Shit.” I hit the mute again. “Sorry. I’m back. Tonight? Really?”
    Sarcasm drips heavily from his unimpressed voice, wetting my ear in the process. “Yeah. Tonight. Don’t put me on hold again. And don’t tell me you have to work.”
    “Hang on.” I hit mute again. “Oh my God. I’m on the schedule at work tonight, too! I didn’t call them. I didn’t even think of calling them!! What am I gonna do?”
    “Holy shit.”
    “Right???!” I hit mute again, bringing back the call, feeling very strongly that I really didn’t think this through. “Jack? I’m on the schedule tonight.”
    That’s the truth.
    “I can’t come to dinner. Sorry.”
    Also true.
    Jenna reaches over, pinches my arm, and grins like the kid cutting school with Ferris Bueller. I bite back a yip at the pain.
    Jack implodes, his growl guttural and hair-raising. “You will be there, Sis . You will call that job and tell them you’re not coming back. And you will sit your sweet little ass at that table and meet Mom tonight. You got it? You owe her.”
    Retaliatory fire blazes through my veins instantly. Like I’m possessed, my voice lowers and my spine straightens as I lean forward, finding a power I didn’t know I had. “I owe her? I don’t even know her. I didn’t ask for any of this, Jack. Don’t talk to me like that. If and when I choose to meet your mother, it will be because I want to, not because you order me to do so. You. Don’t. Own. Me.”
    Click.
    With my heart pounding fiercely, I bring my phone to my chest and hold it there, steadying my heartbeat. A white-hot heat took over me just then, and I don’t recognize myself.
    “Did you just hang up on Jack Stone?” Jenna asks, incredulously. I don’t say anything, so she gets louder. “Did you just tell off Jack Fucking Stone?”
    I shrug, but my hand begins to shake. “He’s a jerk. If he thinks he can boss me around, he’s wrong.”
    “Wow. I didn’t know you had it in you, Ruefus.”
    “Yeah you did,” I whisper.
    She laughs. “Okay, yeah. I did. But still, phew! Most people would throw themselves at his feet and you! You just impressed the hell out of me!”
    “Yeah, well…” I stare at the fireworks on the T.V. wondering what I’m going to do about this rivalry I have with the man who is apparently my family. Jack and I have gotten off on the wrong foot to say the least. I don’t want it to be like this, but he has a way of pushing all of my buttons until I’m spewing things I’d never say to anyone else. Why am I being so mean about his mother? Can’t I show her some sympathy and meet the poor woman? At the very least show her I’m not as evil as she must think I am? But Jack keeps pushing me over the edge. What does he think I am? Well, I know what he thinks I am.
    He thinks I’m trash.
    I have to prove him wrong.
    I cut my eyes back to my friend. “Can you imagine sitting down to dinner with the woman who’s husband cheated with your mother?”
    “ And her husband is your dad!” Jenna digs in her bag for lip balm. “I can’t imagine any of this. I’m just along for the ride.”
    “Should I have said yes, Jenna?”
    She pops the cap off the tube and applies it to her lips while talking. “Rue, how are you supposed to say yes when you’re not even in the same state?”
    Blankly, I stare at her. She stops, the balm frozen to her lip as she stares back at me. We burst out laughing and don’t stop until our sides are splitting with cramps.
    At the Brooklyn Bridge, our driver speeds through the toll, thanks to his prepaid pass. Jenna and I