Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 80643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
I dipped into Noah’s bedroom for the first time tonight.
I found a very interesting array of purple sex toys in one deep drawer of his closet, first of all.
The shocker is that most of them were clearly made for women. It’s obvious that he went above and beyond with the Clit Sucker Extreme and a G-spot stimulator that I’d love to see pushed up his tight ass instead.
I pull open a fancy wooden drawer on Noah’s desk.
There are high school yearbooks inside, as well as a couple of old Polaroid cameras that Noah seems to love so much. But there’s also a stack of leather-bound planners, similar to the kind he still uses now at Crimson.
I grab one and flip through it.
Most of it is garden variety high school shit. He wrote down every date he had with any girl. There are silly notes from parties, like “Remember!! Lemonade is a sick mixer for blue raspberry vodka.”
But some of it is cooler.
Noah seems to have started studying Latin in his senior year of high school, and he started taking notes in the language. I don’t understand most of them, but it’s cool, and not something I ever knew he was learning.
When I flip to a few months later in the same planner, there’s another note that shocks me even more.
“New private chef, Kolina. Delicious steak and mashed potatoes. Her son Torin didn’t talk much, but seems cool as fuck.”
“Excuse me?” I mutter out loud to myself as I see that entry.
Never in my fucking life did I think that Noah’s first impression of me was that I was cool.
I remember that night.
I specifically remember thinking he was looking at me across the dinner table like he wanted to squash me like a bug. Shoo, poor kid, and get the hell out of my mansion.
After a certain point that night, he wouldn’t even look at me anymore, and I was always certain it was because he was sick of my presence.
But maybe he was… shy.
I was probably wearing the fake leather jacket I always used to rock in high school, and I’m sure I mentioned that I was openly bisexual, because I love making that clear to people when I first meet them to weed out any asshole homophobes.
Knowing what I know about Noah now…
Everything about that night seems different, suddenly.
Did you feel even a shred of curiosity toward me?
“Torin, love, are you ready?” I hear Mom’s voice cut down the long marble hall.
I slam the planner shut and shove the drawer back in, dipping out into the hallway. I turn the corner and walk back toward the main part of the house, finding Mom.
She looks lovely.
Mom always looked good, even back when we were broke and she only had one secondhand “nice” dress that she wore to every charity event, sewing up any hole that ever started to form on its seams.
But now she’s in a gleaming dark purple dress that I’m sure Phillip got for her. The ceilings in the mansion are colossal, but she still manages to look tall underneath them, smiling at me as I come down the long hall.
“Hey. I’m here,” I tell her.
“Prince Vaughn loves the outdoor bar,” she says. Her heels click on the floor as she puts her hand to the back of my suit. “But he was only out there for about two minutes before he started asking about you.”
“Seems like that’s all he ever does,” I mutter under my breath.
Mom puffs out a little laugh. “He does seem a bit single-minded, doesn’t he?”
I shake my head. “Single brain-celled, maybe.”
“Torin,” Mom says, disapproval creeping into her tone.
“What? I don’t have to pretend to like him just because he’s going to donate. Maybe to his face, but—”
She pauses near the end of the corridor upstairs. We’re in one hallway of many hallways in this house, still far off from the others downstairs.
“I know you struggle with people who flaunt their wealth,” Mom tells me, reaching out to squeeze my hand. “But find a way to just see them as people, Torin. They aren’t that different from us.”
I frown. “I don’t think they’re different at all. They’re the ones who put themselves on a high pedestal. Last night the Prince said he doesn’t understand why more people don’t want pedigreed Dachshunds instead of rescue mutts, and I’m telling you, I was two seconds from tossing my drink in his face.”
“That was… well, to use your words, fucked up. Yes,” Mom says.
When my mother swears in English, I know she really means it. Her native language is Danish, but by now she’s fluent in both.
“It’s revolting.”
I clench my jaw. “And his reaction to your gift. I could still murder him.”
Mom gifted a bottle of wine to the prince that was at least three hundred dollars, and when he received the gift, he laughed.