Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 128156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
It brightens and the old man smiles. “Prescott! What are the odds?” His eyes move to mine, and my brows slice together.
I look behind me just in time to see him ushering Paige back to her seat.
She smiles up at me, radiant and fucking perfect, untainted by the hardships she’s known. Untainted by this man and the money he has. The world he’s trying to push her into rather than letting her make the choice herself.
“I ran into Prescott around the corner.” She comes to my side. Her hand on my chest. “He was telling me about this new place downtown. It has milkshakes named after our dorm buildings. How fun, huh?”
I smile, and it’s so plastic, I can taste it, looking up as the man steps into my line of sight.
“Good to see you, Chase.” He offers me his hand, his smile a genuine, flawless one.
The moment mine lands in his, it’s like something clicks. Suddenly, it all makes fucking sense.
My heart sinks as I comprehend what just happened and why. I glance at her, and then at him, my brain connecting all the damn dots.
It’s him, the man her grandfather wants her to…to marry. Prescott.
He was at the show that night, hundreds of miles from where he belonged.
The lunch Grant showed up asking to take her to, the one I crashed… He meant for it to be a lunch for them to get to know each other.
Prescott asked her on that date, a date that Grant gave him the extra ticket to, likely insinuating he should ask her—a soft launch of her on his arm in front of their peers.
The country club golf day. I thought it was innocent, that I was secure in my relationship, even if I did make it a point that she was taken, just in case, but maybe it was more than I realized. She did say she met a lot more people from their world that day, Prescott likely at their side.
My original suspicion had been true after all, but I let it go once she became mine, because it didn’t matter after that, or so I had thought.
And now he’s here, standing beside her today, playing right into the hand that Grant dealt him, because as few times as I’ve met Prescott, I know he’s, at the very least, a decent person. He’s never gone out of his way to act superior, never flat out disrespectful or flaunty, when he very well could be. No, he wasn’t in on this.
He’s the trickery in someone else’s playbook and I don’t think he knows it.
Grant wants me to see the competition, I realize.
Why?
This whole time, since before she and I ever even came close to making our feelings known, Grant has been planning.
This was a fight for her hand that I didn’t even know I was in, and I just so happened to win. But it wasn’t a fair fight.
No, this game was rigged from the start.
My eyes snap to Grant Randolf, the cold, cunning bastard.
He lifts his glass, his blue eyes locked on mine, a message I can’t read written within them. “To family and, most of all, to loyalty. For without it, the first wouldn’t even exist.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Chase
It’s been two days since I sat across from Grant Randolph the fucking Fifth and had my lies shoved down my throat.
Because that’s what this is.
The raw reality behind all the other bullshit is the one thing that I didn’t do and should have: told her.
I should have opened up about my problems, leaned on her instead of trying to shield or protect her. I didn’t, and now here I am.
I haven’t slept more than an hour, and I’m pretty sure that sixty-dollar steak was the last thing I’ve eaten. And I threw that shit up the second I stepped out of that restaurant.
There’s a gnawing feeling that’s taking over my stomach, but it has nothing to do with hunger. I can’t keep my thoughts straight, and when I try, forcing myself to attempt and understand what the fuck I’m actually dealing with here, fear overtakes my mind and shuts it down.
Paige.
My Paige.
My hands tighten on the steering wheel, and I wish I could squeeze my eyes shut.
He’s out of his fucking mind.
Today was the first day I could break away. If it weren’t for finals or having to come up with an excuse as to why I needed to borrow my best friend’s SUV, I would have driven down here that very next morning. Maybe even that night. But as it was, I had to track down my professors, beg to change my exam times, jumping in early and taking them with an entirely different class altogether. But it’s done.
Why did you even bother with finals? You can’t do shit without that last semester.