Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 147545 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147545 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
My processing of the picture halts suddenly when I realize that doesn’t make sense. She’s wearing one of those heinous blue armbands. And she’s not alone. People in the background are wearing them, too.
In person, I can tell the twins apart, but still images are harder. My initial thought was that it was her and Tim embracing because it had to be.
But it can’t be.
The armbands weren’t a thing when Tim was alive.
Which means that’s not Tim Walters.
It’s Tor Walters whose arms are locked around Nina’s waist.
CHAPTER 28
CASSIE
My heart sinks as I read the caption accompanying Nina’s picture. “I could never let you do this alone.” She put a blue heart emoji at the end of the sentence.
“What the fuck,” I whisper to myself, the picture a bit painful to look at now that I see who it is. My mind reaches for explanations—it’s Tim; it’s an old picture—but none of them make sense.
Tor hugging Nina like that doesn’t make sense, either.
All thoughts of sympathy drain out of me as I take a screenshot, attach it to a message to Tor with the caption, “Hey, so, what the fuck,” and press send before I can reconsider.
The message delivers right away, but he must be too busy to check his phone because several minutes pass without a response.
That, or he saw the text and doesn’t want to deal with it right now. Doesn’t know what to say. Or he’s deciding to trade me in for her, and he’s never going to answer. That’s probably it.
I pout at my phone, wishing he wasn’t at the one place I can’t go because I want to yell at him.
Finally, my cell phone rings, and my heart jumps to my throat when I see his name on the screen.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Hey,” he says. “Sorry if it’s a little loud.”
“The noise isn’t what I need a sorry for.”
“Yeah, I got your text, but I don’t even know what that is.”
“Um, how many pictures are you posing for with Nina Cortez that you don’t recall that one?”
“I’m not posing for pictures with her.”
“Just holding her? Comforting her? What the fuck, Tor?”
“No,” he says, a little more annoyed. “Of course not. Why the fuck would I comfort Nina?”
“That’s a really good question.”
He pauses, and he must be looking at the picture again, because he says, “Okay, it does look bad. I don’t even know—I mean, a lot of people have been hugging me, Cassie. Maybe she was one of them, but I truly don’t even remember when this was taken. Her friend must have snapped the picture at the perfect time.”
I look at the picture again, shaking my head. It’s really hard to believe this was just incredible timing. The photo looks posed. It looks like the kind of picture you have eight subtle variations of because you were trying to get just the right angle.
“Are you really mad at me?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, wide-eyed even though he can’t see me. “I get that it’s a vigil for your brother and people might hug you, but look at the way your arms are wrapped around her waist. I am the only person you should be holding like that, and for the record, the last person in the world I would like you to hug is Nina Cortez. How would you feel if you saw a picture of any man alive holding me that close, knowing the picture was taken today?”
“I would not enjoy that at all. And I’m sorry that it looks… I really was not holding her like that. If anything, it was a quick hug. I’m telling you, I don’t know how she got this shot.”
“And that caption. Ugh, she’s such an asshole.”
“I don’t know if it’s a dig at you. I don’t even know if she knows we’re together.”
“Okay, I need to stop you right here because I need to warn you, if you say anything that even slightly sounds like you’re defending Nina, I will lose at least thirty percent of my attraction to you.”
“You’re right, she is an asshole.”
Reluctantly, I crack a smile at his pointedly quick turnaround.
“The biggest asshole I’ve ever met, actually.”
I sigh happily. “See, this is the energy I need.”
“Glad I could help,” he says lightly.
“To be fair, you created the problem in the first place,” I point out.
“Hey, Nina did that. Because she’s an asshole.”
I grin. “See, I can’t even see you, and I’m like, ‘aw, he’s so smart and handsome.’”
He chuckles, then after a few seconds, he asks, “Are you feeling better?”
“No,” I mutter, but I’m not that serious. Joking around a little did help lessen the crazy, but Nina has been such a sore spot for me for so long that it’s hard to stomach any interaction between them that I can’t directly witness myself. Especially when she frames it that way, and I’ve seen her go after guys before. She always gets her way eventually. “What did she say to you?”