It turned out, every evil look he’d ever shot at Eve had been nothing. Practically heart eyes. She’d had no idea one man could produce this much tangible malevolence with nothing but his eyeballs. If Brian collapsed at this very second, she might have to report Jacob as the cause of death. “Shitty?” he repeated quietly, with the air of a volcano about to erupt and burn everyone in the vicinity horribly alive. “Shitty?”

“See, that’s your problem!” Sophie was saying. “You think you’re above everything. You can’t enjoy anything. This place is adorable.”

Jacob closed his Eyes of Violence. “Yes,” he muttered to himself. “Adorable. Fuck you, Brian.”

Eve knew this was not an appropriate moment to giggle, but she might have to do it anyway.

As if he’d read her thoughts, Jacob cracked open one eye and ordered, “Keep. Quiet.”

She stuck out her tongue.

“Maybe my problem is that you’re boring,” Brian was saying, although he sounded as blustery as a hurricane and nowhere near as impressive.

Eve rolled her eyes and mouthed, Men.

Jacob, to her surprise, gave her a look of approval. “Quite.”

“You don’t like men?” she whispered.

“It depends. I don’t like imbalanced relationships, and men are frequently the perpetrators.”

“I’m boring?” Sophie sounded like a woman on the edge. “Brian, you haven’t made me come in six weeks and five days. You think Fish and Chips Wednesday at Wetherspoons is a decent date night and you missed my best friend’s thirtieth because fucking Holby City was on. You’re boring as shit and I’m sick of you acting like it’s me!”

“Not a fan of the romance thing, then?” Eve asked.

“Not exactly,” Jacob said. Honestly, she was surprised he’d admitted that much. But then he added, the words low and quick, “I’m not principally opposed. I’m not opposed at all. There’s nothing wrong with—with love. I just think truly happy relationships are hard to find. Often, someone’s disappointed, which makes their partner the disappointment. You’re either Brian or Sophie, and I’d rather be neither.”

Those words were so similar to Eve’s own (occasional, totally depressing) thoughts, she almost fell over in shock. “Good to know I’m not the only one with terrible taste in men,” she muttered. “Or whoever it is you . . .”

“Women,” he supplied crisply. “And I don’t have terrible taste. That’s simply the way things turn out, sometimes. Happy endings aren’t as common as car crashes.”

Eve blinked. She shouldn’t want to cling to the romantic opinion of Jacob Wayne, of all people, but—gosh. “That’s an attractive idea,” she said ruefully. “That bad relationships are just probability.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Yours aren’t?”

So he assumed she had bad relationships. She couldn’t feign outrage, since she’d once dated a white guy who’d said Wha gwan, rastaman? to her father. “I make bad choices,” she explained with a teasing smile, because teasing smiles softened everything. They were her safety net. Was she joking? Was she deadly serious? Who could tell? “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a part-time hot mess.”