Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 106150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Silas had always been the mother hen of our group, and I appreciated that he was concerned about my emotional well-being, but…
“I’m fine,” I assured him. “I care about Rowe a lot. I want to build something real with him. But Silas, Sterling Chase is still my baby. It means more to me than anything.”
I said the words with confidence, believing them to be absolutely true…
But less than twenty-four hours later, I realized I’d become a bigger liar than Rowe Prince ever was. Because when I had to choose between Sterling Chase and… Sterling Chase, there was hands down no question which I’d choose.
My Prince of Lies would win every time.
TWENTY
ROWE
I’d worried that having Bash’s friends come to the Hamptons would pop the iridescent bubble we’d been floating in, but it hadn’t. Not at all. The brotherhood were nothing but kind, and Silas had even pulled me aside to apologize for being slow to trust me.
“It wasn’t personal. I’d side-eye anybody these guys got serious about,” he’d admitted, gesturing to the men laughing in the living area. “Wouldn’t matter if you came with a PhD and a recommendation from Lin-Manuel Miranda. Besides,” he added with a grin, “Bash always said he’d end up married to Sterling Chase. Now maybe he will.”
I laughed at the time—a kind of frantic laugh, though Silas didn’t know me well enough to recognize it. “Serious about”? “Married to”? I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t realize Bash had feelings for me, not after he’d done something as heart-shatteringly, mind-bendingly wonderful as telling me the true story of the founding of Sterling Chase, but I still couldn’t comprehend what anything beyond this week with him would look like. Me, showing up at his penthouse apartment with my delivery sombrero after a shift? Him, coming over to chill on Joey’s futon after a long day of buying and selling small countries? What about my parents? What about the Tech Barn?
So I simply didn’t think about it. I focused on preparing for Monday, on the future of Daisy Chain, on making sure the bubble didn’t pop.
But when we arrived back in the city on Saturday afternoon and the elevator doors opened into the palatial entrance hall of Bash’s Park Avenue apartment, I felt the bubble pop anyway, trampled beneath the feet of commitment and lost in the shuffle of reality.
A reality that included ten-foot ceilings and a private elevator.
“Hey!” Kenji said, materializing out of nowhere. “You guys made good time.”
“This… what… is…?” I didn’t even know where to begin in my quest for answers about Bash’s living space. If his Hamptons house had screamed wealth to me, this pretty much deafened me. The furnishings alone were probably worth millions, and that was before I even began asking about the art on the walls.
“Rowe, you’re set up in the guest room. Third door down the far corridor on the left,” Kenji said, waving in the general direction of an honest-to-god gilt-framed mirror hung over an antique mahogany console table in a hallway carpeted by a luxurious Persian runner.
“Set up?” I repeated, still gawking like a tourist at Versailles. “I have my suitcase here.”
“Keep moving,” Kenji said, barely holding back a knowing smirk. “You can gawk after we see how well the tuxedo fits.”
“Joey sent over his tux?” I asked a split second before I entered the guest room and saw an Alexander McQueen garment bag hanging from a small rolling clothes rack.
“Not exactly,” Kenji called down the hallway after me. The laugh in his voice wasn’t funny.
“Fuck,” I whispered, reaching into the garment bag like it held a venomous snake but instead pulling out the most gorgeous tuxedo I’d ever seen. “We aren’t in Kansas anymore.”
“Please don’t tell me this is the thing that finally makes it all too weird for you.” Bash walked into the room behind me and gave me an uncertain smile. “It’s off-the-rack.”
“An off-the-rack Alexander McQueen,” I squeaked, running my hand over the ultra-smooth wool. “This had to cost… five thousand dollars?” That was enough to buy a used car. To pay my parents’ mortgage for months. “I… I…”
Bash’s smile fell. “You don’t have to wear it,” he said quickly. “I’ll be proud to have you on my arm wearing the bunny tux. Or those pajamas with the goldfish that you wore at the beach. I just know you like beautiful things, and I thought… But it doesn’t matter. My date’s going to be the most gorgeous, quirky man at the banquet. And I care about the man inside the tux, not whose name is on the jacket.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. Rowe Prince, what the fuck are you doing? Daisy’s voice was clear in my head. Hadn’t I been the person, two weeks ago, telling Miranda Baxter-Hicks that she needed to wear dresses she liked and not to worry about whether they were good enough for anyone else?