Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Because Charlotte was home.
From freaking England.
Where she’d been living and studying for the past four years.
We’d seen her here and there, of course. When she visited home. When we ventured over the pond.
But this was different.
She was home-home.
For good.
She was done with university, and she was back to strike out on her adult life with her shiny new public relations degree.
She’d shocked the whole Costa family (and me more than anyone) when she hadn’t gone into something that had to do with books.
But she’d shown wisdom beyond her years when she shrugged and told me, “I think when we monetize our passions, we lose our love for them a little bit. I want to keep books special. So I don’t want to make them my job.”
I understood her logic and was happy for her to keep her passions while pursuing a career she would find fulfilling and, I hoped, profitable.
Apparently, while working on her degree, she’d built a little name for herself by managing the public relations for several small-time celebrities and influencers, spinning bad media, giving them shiny new reputations.
I had every bit of faith that she would be at the top of the list of the best PR specialists in no time.
“Oh my God!”
I flew at her, sending her back a step as our arms went around each other.
“Why didn’t you have us come pick you up? No. That doesn’t matter. Which bookstore are we hitting up first? That’s the question.”
“The Strand, obviously,” she said as we pulled back. “I haven’t gotten a new mug from them in almost five years.”
“They have so many new totes too.”
“Well, then I need—” she started but trailed off as she looked at the TV behind me.
“Just weeks after seeming to put his last PR nightmare behind him, baseball bad boy Asher Morgan is making headlines again…”
The B-roll was a mix of posing shots of baseball’s golden boy smiling for cameras, playing on the field, and walking red carpets, spliced with recordings of him breaking equipment, stumbling out of clubs with female celebrities, and a viral clip of him in a fistfight just a few weeks back.
I glanced back at Charlotte, trying to gauge her interest.
I never did get a full explanation of what went on with her and Asher in their senior year, where she was tutoring him so he didn’t get kicked off the team. But I got a feeling that it had progressed beyond something casual. Though maybe not fully to something romantic. There’d been no red-rimmed eyes or sad music playing. One day, she stopped saying his name and never seemed to think of him again.
Everything about how she was watching the screen, though, made me think that I was wrong about the last part.
I let her finish watching the story, but I chose not to harp on it.
“Does your uncle know you’re back yet?”
“Nope.”
“Liam?”
“Nope. I wanted to see you first.”
God, this girl.
I loved her more than I could have known was possible. The bond had become more like friends in the past few years as she built a life away from home. And I was living for the new dynamic.
“Well, I think I need to close up the shop so we can get a sweet treat and then spend an ungodly amount of your uncle’s money on books and merch.”
“See? That’s why you were my first stop,” she said, linking her arm with mine as we walked out of the shop.
Our plans were thwarted, though, when we nearly collided with Christopher and Liam as they made their way toward the store.
The years had changed Liam a lot. Gone was that boyishness that had clung to him for a long time, chiseling out his jaw and hollowing out his cheekbones.
He looked so much like Christopher at times that it seemed strange that they were only uncle and nephew, not father and son.