Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
I think back to the way he looked at me when he said he wasn’t going to be with anyone else. He expected my loyalty too.
“Maybe,” I whisper, “but we’re engaged now. That changes things.”
Her eyes flash with horror before she hisses, “Hattie, it’s not real!”
“I know. I do. I’m not stupid, Gigi.”
She huffs. “Never said you were. But my brother? Really? You’re actually falling for his crap? Holy shit.”
“You can’t tell him you know. I don’t think he’ll forgive me. But I didn’t want to leave you in the dark. We’re friends.”
“Obviously, I won’t. Girl code and all,” she says with another harsh eye roll. “But seriously, what were you thinking?”
I wasn’t.
Not at all, really.
When he kissed me, there was zero chance I was ever going to think straight again.
Not about the infinite reasons why we shouldn’t do this.
And all of them are linked to my body and the tantalizing things he does with it.
“We’ve been cool about it. We talked and agreed it’s just while we’re”—gulp—“married.”
With a defeated sigh, she shakes her head.
“But you know this isn’t real, right?” Her eyes narrow. “Or is it?”
“No! It’s just… It just happened, okay? God, why can everybody else do some weird casual hookup thing and I can’t?” And it will almost certainly happen again if I get my way. “I know what I’m doing, Margot.”
“I worry for you,” she mutters. “Shit. I can’t believe he’d do this. It’s just the kind of dumb tomcat crap I hoped he was finally growing out of. I mean, I always knew he was starting to like you, but—”
“Wait, what? What do you mean he was starting to like me?” I feel light-headed.
I thought I was the one delivering the bombshell.
Then again, to Margot, who makes reading people into an art, she probably thought it was obvious.
“The way he looked at you?” she says with a sigh. “I think you know. At dinner. He couldn’t pry his eyes off you.”
“We were pretending.”
“Remember Cooper? Ethan went off like a jealous idiot in front of everyone.” She folds her arms. “Tell me he’d do that if he was just pretending. In case you hadn’t noticed, you’ve had a glow-up since we were young, and I think he’s noticed.”
The idea sends a little thrill through me.
Personally, I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m more confident than I was as a dorky teenager being bullied by her older brother.
Back then, I could barely string a sentence together around him.
And now he wants me.
He noticed how I’ve changed, and he doesn’t want me to diet and slim down into supermodel mode just to feel like I’m good enough.
That’s crazy.
Borderline incomprehensible.
“Oh no,” Margot says, her frown deepening the longer she stares. “You’ve got it bad.”
“I do not.”
“You do.” She sighs again. “I guess that’s why you’ve got that sappy little smile on your face. How serious is it?”
“Not serious!” I’m almost shouting.
She sniffs.
“For your sake, it better not be. You don’t want to get tangled up with Blackthorn drama, babe. Not a second longer than necessary.”
“I mean, I spent whole summers with you and Leo and that was fine?”
Margot raises an eyebrow.
“PopPop basically made Ethan get engaged to you. Does that strike you as a normal thing to do?”
“No,” I say eventually. It’s the one thing I haven’t been able to figure out. “Why do you think he did it?”
Margot takes my arm, leading me back off the docks.
Her face is set like stone, unusually serious.
A sad, strange part of me wants to believe Leonidas did this because he wanted to set us up.
I want to believe he knew—or at least he was hoping—that the legal handcuffs would blossom into something real.
But that’s just the thing. We didn’t choose this.
To have a lasting love, at some point you choose each other.
Although deep down I wish it could be more, I know it’s ridiculous.
I’m so not the one for Ethan Blackthorn.
Not for real.
Not in this life.
Just like Margot says, this sham marriage thing isn’t real and I’d better get that lodged in my brain, front and center.
He’s only going through with it because six months down the line, we’ll go our merry ways.
As for the sex—well, that’s just it.
Sex.
A freakishly good romp to relieve tension and stress while we’re stuck with make-believe.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything more.
Leonidas couldn’t have predicted it would go this way if he forced us together. The old man was eccentric, but he wasn’t a raving lunatic.
When we were teenagers, we sure weren’t magnetic, and it had nothing to do with the age gap.
We hated each other.
I would’ve rather licked the beach for an hour than gotten a crush on Ethan.
But why me? Why did he make his grandson choose me of all people?
There’s no good reason for him to think we would be perfect for each other.