Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Nothing feels real. Not even the glass slipper.
Phoebe draws me up toward the stone mansion. While I’m a principal on this job, Phoebe’s role is to make sure we’re all in the proper places at the right time. “I must say, Hails, you’re really killing it.” She speaks under her breath. “I don’t think I could’ve moved the timeline up this fast.”
I know what she’s implying.
Trent wasn’t supposed to propose and marry me on the same day. I’d planned for a short engagement that would at least last the rest of the summer.
“That was unexpected,” I whisper back. “I think Jake walking in on the proposal pushed Trent there.” I still can’t shake the look in Jake’s eyes. The real hurt. Real despair. Trent inhaled it like a noxious drug, and he couldn’t help himself from twisting the knife just a little more.
She bumps my shoulder with hers. “The proposal was all you.”
Once Trent believed I was as moldable as clay, he realized I’d be amenable to any arrangement he offered. He never really doubted that I wouldn’t want him. He thinks most girls in town would suck his dick for the pleasure of saying they did.
Rocky was right. He wasn’t hard to manipulate. Only difficult to make sure he doesn’t want me sexually.
Which…brings me back to how he believed I was clay.
The day before the proposal, Trent flipped through books in my bedroom at Stonehaven. He barged in, and I told Jake it was okay. To wait in the hall. “You’re an interesting creature, Hay-Hay.” He shut the novel hard. “How would you feel if I asked you to…I don’t know, fuck Oliver?”
I shrugged, trying not to gulp. “I wouldn’t mind.” I would very much mind.
“And if I watched? Because I do think he’s into you. My brother might be, too, but he’s blah.” He thought he was being flirty and cute. He was not. “You could do so much better.”
“Like…you?”
“Of course like me. We could be a team, you and I.” He curved his arm over my shoulders. “Rule the world.” He spun his hand across the air. That’s when he laid out our arrangement. How we could benefit from a marriage together.
I agreed.
After that conversation, I thought there might be a slim possibility he’d want to consummate the marriage…with Oliver in attendance.
I did not expect him to say, “I booked a room at the Harbor Hotel for tonight. I think you must be doing it all wrong.”
I got nervous. “Doing what wrong?”
He laughed, looked over at me in the car. He was behind the wheel. I was in the white designer dress he bought me, the one I’m wearing now. “I’m going to teach you how to fuck, Hay-Hay. You can thank me later.”
“I…” I was speechless. “Why do you think I’d need help having sex?”
“The way you kiss. Very bad. That needs help first. I might have Oliver assist there.”
Oh, okay, I thought.
“You’d like that?” he asked, as if he was doing me a favor.
I shrugged, my blood frozen over. I wouldn’t even call what Trent and I did at the courthouse a kiss. My lips hovered over his. He retracted like I was a moldy wall…one he needed to clean first, apparently. Then he planted a kiss on my cheek.
For show.
My head whirls with the memory. My bones ache with the longing for Oliver and for Jake. It rose minute by minute while I was there. And it rises minute by minute when I’m not with either of them here.
I wonder when it’ll engulf me.
The yearning.
Phoebe draws me close to a lilac tree. More secluded. She squeezes my hand like she can see I’m not all present. My mind…am I wandering?
I focus as Phoebe says, “Trent is high on his own supply tonight. Everyone wants to talk to him. I don’t think he’ll be looking for you until after the fireworks.”
That’s good.
That’s good.
“The wedding…” Her voice sputters out when I avert my gaze to the flowers.
No one knows what really happened. Trent drove me here to the Bennets’ party as soon as the marriage license was filed. I haven’t told her about the conversation in the car.
My throat dries. My lips feel wind chapped.
I shouldn’t be at this party.
I need to leave early, I think.
“Phoebe.” I turn.
She’s not…she’s not here anymore. My pulse spikes. Was she ever really with me? Did I hallucinate her? No. She held my hand. Phoebe was holding my hand. Now my hand is empty. Children giggle and race in front of me, sparklers crackling, the heat nipping me as embers drift into my skin.
The fireworks boom.
It’s too loud.
I blink, and Oliver is suddenly beside me. His hair darker. He’s letting the natural color grow out. Wind whips at his linen shirt while he pulls off a strand of lilacs. He starts twisting the thorny stems together. “You forgot your earplugs?” he asks conversationally, his gaze everywhere but on me.