Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 56294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
My phone vibrates. It’s a text from a mutual friend of me and Sophie. Have you seen the video?!
“What’s wrong?” Paul asks.
I click the link. A video of Sophie appears. She’s on her feet, yelling at Jane Larson. I can’t believe I let myself miss the livestream! What sort of friend am I?
“I had a silly crush on him…”
“Is that Sophie?” Paul asks.
“It’s from her interview today,” I tell him.
“Somebody found a video of me talking about the crush. They said they’d show my brother unless I got Kaleb to say it was him.”
“Wait, what?” Paul tries to sit up, then lets out a shaky breath when his body has different ideas. “What crush? Sophie has a crush on… on Kaleb?”
“That’s what she’s saying,” I murmur.
“What do you mean, what she’s saying? Surely she’s talked to you about it.”
I jump to my feet, shaking my head, feeling pathetic tears trying to sting my eyes. All those moments with Paul, sneaking around, the mind-blowing sex, all of it leading here to this secret. I knew things were going to get bad when Kaleb came home.
“Don’t put me in this position,” I say. “It’s not fair.”
“Forget that part, then,” he growls. “I don’t care if you knew. If you did, you had your reasons for not telling me, but that’s what Sophie said, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
He sounds desperate, as though he wants me to tell him he hallucinated. Sophie didn’t really say any of that.
“Yes,” I say. “She’s had a crush on him for years. I’m sorry.”
“A crush,” he repeats, then a smile slowly spreads across his face. “What does that even mean? A crush? It doesn’t matter. It’s not like us, Gwennie. It’s not like anything will ever happen between them.”
I bite down, smoothing my hands across my belly, feeling like our future children are criticizing me for not saying anything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sophie
“I guess you want me to apologize,” I say in the hired car back to the hotel.
Kaleb sits across from me, his arms folded, staring out the window. “I didn’t want anybody to know about the crush, but hell, the look on Jane’s face almost made it worth it.”
I almost grin, but then I think about Paul, laid up, alone in his bed. How will he get the news? Will Riley tell him about it? Will one of his friends send him the video? It’s already spreading across social media.
“I should call him,” I say.
“What will you do if he asks you if it’s more than a crush?” Kaleb replies. “What if he asks you if anything has ever happened between us? What then?”
“I’ll… tell the truth,” I say.
“You’ll what?” he snaps.
“We can’t lie to him about this forever.”
“I thought we were going to end it,” he says fiercely.
I stare at him, hoping he can see the anger, not the sadness, trying to prick my eyes.
“Is that what you want?”
He reaches over and touches my hand. There’s a divider between us and the driver. He can’t see in here. At least, I assume he can’t. Otherwise, Kaleb would never touch me. He squeezes my hand tightly, letting me feel the support.
“You know it’s not,” he says passionately, “but if he asks you, and you tell him, we have to be sure.”
“Sure about what?”
He leans close, his breath hot against me.
“If this is just a fling or something else,” he says.
I grab onto his leg instinctively. My hand snaps down and squeezes tight. This has all been such an impossible rush. I haven’t let myself think about the future. I’m not even sure I can go there now. My head is too much of a mess. I know I want him, but…
“Are we supposed to make that decision just like that?” Letting go of his leg, I snap my fingers.
“There’s no point telling him and breaking his goddamn heart if we’re just going to end things.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that. Is that what you want?”
He kisses me suddenly, grabbing onto my shoulders and letting me feel the passion blazing through him. Now I’m super sure the driver can’t see us. There’s no way he’d do this if the driver could see us. It lets me relax more than I should be able to, sliding my hands up his arms, feeling his muscles, his power, the strong sense of belonging.
Our tongues clash together, making me think of last night, his tongue swirling around my clit. Toward the end, he put his tongue inside of me, like he couldn’t resist going all the way. He was too far gone to stop.
I place my hand on his chest, pushing him away. “My cell phone is vibrating. Oh, God. I bet it’s…”
Paul.
His name appears on the screen, along with a photo of us. It was taken when I was ten and he was twenty. I’m sitting on his knee, all smiles, Paul grinning down at me as the sun shines behind us. It gives the photo a heavenly sort of glow. It usually makes me smile when it appears on my phone.