Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 97994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
“You heading home?” I ask.
She hums softly through the phone. “Yup. Well, no. I’m going to my friend’s place.” A pause. “Have a good time at practice.”
I huff a quiet laugh. “Yeah. I’ll try.”
Not likely.
Not with Declan Kennedy breathing down my neck, sniffing around for… something. He’s paranoid. Protective. And a lot fearful I’m going to spill his dirty little secret to his precious sister.
I mean—I will.
Eventually.
FIFTEEN
JULIETTE
Blaire doesn’t even let me set down my purse before she demands, “Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
“I just got here. Let me at least—” I stop when I get a look at her face. My best friend is not playing around; she wants the details, and she wants them now. Two wine glasses in her hands, one of them extended to me.
I take it. Saunter to her living room with her hot on my trail.
“You are going to be the death of me, I swear to God,” she grumbles, falling on the couch next to me, knees tucked under her, eyes bright and predatory. “From the top, please. You texted me that you were outside his building and ‘rethinking your life choices’ and almost changed your mind. Then what happened?”
I have told her this story ten times already, but we haven’t been together in person.
I sigh dramatically and take a long sip of wine. “To summarize—this sex may be worth getting fired over.”
Blaire slaps the back of the couch. “I knew it. I freaking knew it!”
I roll my eyes. She has no idea the internal battle I’ve been dealing with because I slept with a player.
“Do not joke about that,” she says, though she’s grinning from ear to ear. “You are not losing your job over good sex. No man is worth it!”
She raises her glass and we toast, glasses clinking together.
“Amen!” I say. “But I mean…”
“No, Juliette, knock it off.” She laughs. “I’m serious. He’s your Hall Pass, not the father of your future children.”
My jaw drops, mouth gaping. “You literally have daydreams about me becoming a WAG and living the life of luxury.”
“No! I have dreams of me becoming a WAG and living the life of luxury! Stop confusing the two.” She points the wine glass accusingly in my direction, and I watch as the liquid sloshes inside. “I would thrive in luxury. I was born for soft lighting and private drivers.”
I roll my eyes as I take another sip. “You get carsick in Ubers.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Calm down. I am not trying to become a WAG,” I insist. “I am trying to not get fired.”
“And you won’t,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “You slept with one guy. You didn’t embezzle money. Good lord, stop being so dramatic.”
“I fraternized.”
“You had adult consensual fun, and you can’t take it back, you got good and fucked. Now, you have to live with it.”
“With a player.”
She leans closer, lowering her voice. “You say that like you committed treason.”
“It feels like treason.”
“To who? HR?”
“Yes! And my brother. What would he say?”
“Oh my god, your brother. Who cares what he thinks?”
“I do.” I care.
“Jules, name one time that douche has ever been there for you.”
She’s being harsh, and I press my lips together, staring down into my wine. “I think you’re forgetting the time I dated Bruno Rusthaven. Our sophomore year in college?”
How could she forget? Bruno was on the hockey team and a junior; and when he’d asked me to a hockey party during hell week, I couldn’t freaking believe it. He was a popular enforcer I’d had a crush on, with scars on his face and a few missing teeth, not that it mattered.
I was used to guys with gaps where teeth should be.
Blaire had done my make-up and my hair, and we’d gone together. But when we’d arrived at the party, not only did Bruno have his arm around someone else, he asked me to join them in an upstairs bedroom. I’d been so embarrassed because I had genuinely thought…
Well.
Never mind what I thought.
Somehow Declan found out—and when his university played ours, my brother had leveled Bruno during the game, knocking him on his ass, and told him never to text me again.
He has always had my back in his own way.
“Bruno Rusthaven was a dick,” Blaire declares, tipping her head back against the couch cushion. “And you are a grown woman. You do not need your brother’s permission—or his savior complex—to have a relationship.”
“It’s not a relationship.”
She shakes her head. “Whatever—semantics, you get my point. Declan does not get a say. I mean, have you seen some of the women he dates? Not a single one he can take home to your mother. Not a single one you’ve met!”
I can’t help it. I laugh.
But Blaire wouldn’t understand, because Blaire is an only child—and, she doesn’t trust him, doesn’t respect his opinion, and has called him shady on more than one occasion. She’s also been calling my brother a slimeball since college, and she has never once softened on that stance.