KARMA COLADA

Chapter Thirty-Nine

"IF YOU called me here thinking you'll be able to talk me into taking down the Facebook group, you're wasting both our time. I'm never deleting the group, Leon. You deserve to be immortalized as a notorious playboy."

Leon blankly stared across the extensive glass desk into the face of Jen Morrison, a living snapshot from his past. Her Bambi-like hazel eyes and cascading golden curls triggered a wave of nostalgia in him. So did the harsh scowl over her features.

Jen was one of his many almost-girlfriends in high school, and the dissolution of their relationship was largely due to her controlling tendencies.

Obviously, he was right about her.

"And here I am, thinking I'll go down in history as the brain behind one of the most successful dating apps in the twenty-first century," Leon shot back. He hated gloating, but Jen was so openly hostile he couldn't help riling her up even more.

Jen responded with a dismissive scoff. "Your fancy office doesn't impress me."

Leon bit back the comment sitting on his tongue. On the contrary, her eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when she noticed the view from his office windows, which overlooked the serene Puget Sound and rolling Olympic mountains.

"I'm not trying to impress you," Leon stated in clipped tones.

She rolled her eyes dramatically. "Then what the hell am I here for?"

Leon fiddled with the item in his pocket, the talisman that upended his entire life in a span of a month. He fished it out and set it down on the desk with a tinkling clatter.

A small gasp slipped out of Jen as she gawked at Grandma June's ring.

"You're not proposing...right?" She sounded oddly hopeful, so Leon hastily shook his head sideways before she got the wrong idea.

"I asked you to come here because I wanted to apologize to you. Face to face," Leon uttered as sincerely as he could.

The corner of Jen's mouth twitched with disappointment. "What's that ring got to do with anything?"

His muscles tensed when a vision of Naomi wriggled its way into his mind. For the rest of his life, Leon would never forget the injured expression on her face the last time they spoke. Nor the self-loathing that haunted him ever since, like a cancerous tumor eating him up from the inside.

"This ring led to my first-ever heartbreak."

Her eyes widened at his sudden admission. As if remembering something important, Jen rummaged around her handbag for a moment before pulling out her phone, encased in a pink, sparkly cover. Like an amateur reporter, she pointed the camera at his face and hit record.

"Sucks, doesn't it? Welcome to the club, Leon F. Fink," she jeered.

Leon clenched his jaw. "What are you doing?"

"The group is going to love seeing the villain in all our stories get his comeuppance at last!" She tilted her head back for a diabolical laugh. "Who's the woman who turned you down? Do you know where she lives? I'd love to send her a fruit basket."

When Jen carried on filming in spite of his murderous glare, Leon softly groaned in annoyance. "There were two of them," he said defeatedly.

"Figures."

"Let me rephrase," Leon corrected, rolling his eyes. "I mean, there were two women who turned me down. One of them was my ex-fiancée, who technically left me at the altar for a fling halfway across the globe. The other was a complete curveball I didn't see coming."