Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 52975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
“Yeah, I’m on the way from lunch back to the office. What’s new?”
I move the phone away from my mouth and huff out a sigh. Eric has known me for so long that I don’t need to tiptoe.
“Lainey’s pissed at me.”
He barks out a single note of laughter. “She can be a hothead. She’ll get over it.”
“It’s been more than a week. She won’t look at me and she blows me off every time I text her or try to talk to her.”
After a couple seconds of silence, he says, “Is she okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. She’s gotten to know Carter’s wife Suki and her friends and she went out to trivia with them last night. Didn’t get home ’til twelve thirty.”
He chuckles. “She’s a grown-ass woman, man. She knows how to take care of herself.”
I stand up from the recliner I’m sitting in, agitated. “It’s not that she came home late, it’s that she’s pissed at me.”
“What’d you do?”
I pause. How can I tell him what I said without making him assume it was just me dogging on Shane like I always do?
“Shane came to visit her first weekend here. I was a shit to him and he got pissed and left. He wouldn’t even talk to Lainey; he just drove off. I don’t like the way he treats her.”
“Keep this between you and me, but my parents aren’t thrilled with Shane, either.”
I stop pacing. “Why?”
“Mom referred her friend Jenny to Shane’s business because Jenny’s daughter and her husband want to build a pool. Jenny’s daughter didn’t say anything about how she heard about his business, and she told her mom, who told my mom, that Shane made her uncomfortable when he came over to give her an estimate.”
My pulse pounds, anger already building in his chest. “How? What did he do?”
Eric sighs heavily. “Something about him telling her he’d move them up on the schedule in order to get her into a bikini faster, as long as she’d sent him pics of her in it.”
“That motherfucker.”
“Exactly. I told Mom she needs to tell Lainey, but she’s worried Lainey will just get mad at her.”
My jaw tenses. “She excuses his shitty behavior. Just because it’s not the worst possible shit a man could do to a woman, that doesn’t make it okay.”
“You know I agree.” His voice is glum. “I feel bad. Like I ignored little warning signs because she was so happy.”
“Like what?”
There’s a pause. “He calls her a nerd. Not in an affectionate way. Callie has never liked him, and she hates him at this point because she and Lainey got ready for Shane and Lainey’s engagement party, and Shane didn’t say a thing about how Lainey looked when he saw her. He just said, ‘Hey.’”
“What the fuck? Why are you just now telling me all this?”
He hums, considering. “I don’t know. We just haven’t talked in a while. Have we talked since the engagement party? I know I texted to make sure you were okay the next morning because you got so hammered.”
That headache lasted two days.
“You should have called me.” I run a hand through my hair, pacing into the kitchen. “I knew I should have punched that smug bastard when I had the chance.”
“I guess I need to talk to Lainey,” he says.
“Yeah, you do. Today.”
“She’s doing okay otherwise? Mom said her research thing’s going well.”
My jaw refuses to unclench. “I don’t know because she hasn’t talked to me in more than a week.”
“Oh yeah, you never told me what you did.”
“I told her Shane’s not good enough for her.”
A pause. “That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“You’ve said that to her a lot and she usually blows you off.”
“Not this time. I think she might have cried.”
He exhales hard. “Shit. Okay, I’ll talk to her today.”
“Let me know how it goes.”
“Bash, I’m just pulling into the office, but is there something else going on with you? You sound different.”
It’s the worst possible time to tell him. Or is it the best? We’re on the phone, so he can’t punch me. And he has to go, so he can’t yell at me for the next hour.
“I might have feelings for Lainey.”
I hear him opening his car door, and then the other end of the line goes deathly silent. “Eric?”
“You might?” The car door closes again. Shit.
I square my shoulders. It’s time to man up. “I do.”
“What kind of feelings?”
My laugh is humorless. “You don’t want me to go into detail, trust me.”
“Jesus fuck, Bash. I have to tell my sister her fiancé is a piece of shit later today. If you fuck her when she’s vulnerable, I’ll never speak to you again.”
I scowl. “What the hell kind of guy do you think I am? I’d never do that.”
“You said feelings, which for you means one thing.”
I shake my head, the truth really sinking in now that I’m saying it out loud. “Not this time.”