Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 167204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 557(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 557(@300wpm)
When I can think about Paris without crying myself to sleep, then I’ll go on a date with someone else.
“You heading to lunch?” he asks, since he knows my schedule by heart.
“Yep.”
“You want company?”
I smile faintly because he already knows my answer. “Nope.”
He opens his mouth to say something, but I never get to find out what it is because Sloane comes walking up the sidewalk, her face a little flushed from the cold I guess, and her eyes a touch brighter than usual.
“Hey, you,” she says, walking over to him.
The sparkle in his eyes dims and he looks over at her. “Hey.”
“Well, it was nice catching up.” I flash them both polite but very fake smiles, then I take a hard left across the lawn and head for the parking lot.
I’m in the mood for off-campus food today, and since I can afford food with my Killian money, I think I will.
I make it all the way to my car, and then I feel a presence behind me.
Sighing, I turn around. “Killian, you can’t—”
But I stop because the dark-haired menace standing behind me isn’t Killian.
It’s Aiden.
“Oh. Hi,” I say a touch awkwardly since he’s caught me off guard.
To be honest, my instincts about him still haven’t recalibrated, either. I’m always a little uneasy when I see him. It’s like muscle memory, the whisper of being trapped beneath him on that table in the basement that has since crumbled to ash.
I clear my throat. Since he still hasn’t said anything, I rush to explain myself. “Um, I just ran into Killian, and he was also wearing a gray hoodie, so…”
“Got it.”
“Yeah,” I say awkwardly. “So… are you just skulking around the parking lot, or…?”
He smirks. “No. I was looking for you.”
“Me?” My eyebrows rise. “Why?”
“Because I have something for you.”
I resist the urge to repeat both of my previous questions and watch him reach into his hoodie pocket and draw out a black envelope with a royal blue wax seal.
“What is this?” I ask, glancing up at him.
“An invitation to the Blue Blood Ball.”
I frown. “What is that?”
“You know the Met Gala?”
I nod.
“Kinda like that, but darker. The Blue Bloods throw one at the end of every fall semester. It’s invite only, but I managed to snag one, and the invitation admits two, so… I need a date.”
My eyes widen. “And you think I might know someone?”
He smirks, his dark eyes glinting with amusement. “No. I want you.”
My heart stalls. He says the words deliberately to make that happen, but it makes me uneasy that it works despite knowing that.
Before I met Killian, that night at the Rho Kappa Halloween party, I did feel a very unwanted tug of interest when I was under Aiden on that table. Once I met Killian, that went away, of course, but…
Well, maybe Stacie was a little right.
Maybe I am attracted to crazy, dangerous men.
I’m definitely not going out with this one, though.
“Yeah, I’m sure Killian would love that.”
“No reason he has to know,” Aiden says.
“I think he might notice us coming to his party together.”
His dark eyebrows rise. “Did I forget to tell you the best part? Open the invitation.”
I frown at him warily, but I break the fancy wax seal and pull out a thick piece of creamy vellum. The invitation is written in fancy calligraphy, and I can’t deny a jolt of excitement when I read the first line.
You’re invited to a masquerade…
I look up at Aiden.
He smirks. “I seem to recall you liking The Phantom of the Opera.”
“I do,” I say regretfully, wishing I hated that, too.
Oh man, I would love to go to a masquerade. In a way, it even feels like the perfect finale to close the Killian chapter of my life.
“We’ll all be wearing masks,” Aiden tells me. “If we move carefully, I think we can easily evade Killian’s notice and still enjoy ourselves. We’ll just be two anonymous masked faces in a sea of them.”
Shoot.
I pout a little because I do want to go, just not with him.
I would have loved to go to this with Killian. Absolutely loved it.
My memory tugs me back to Paris, strolling on his arm up the opera house stairs.
God, that was romantic.
And sweet.
And a different time.
My bittersweet feeling fades a little as I consider all the plans he’s busy making with someone else.
But I don’t cry this time, and that… well, that’s when I said I’d go on a date with someone, and what are the odds I’d be standing right in front of someone who asked me on one when it happened?
I look up at Aiden.
This is a bad idea.
But that means I’ve already stepped off the cliff.
“You know what? Yeah. What the hell? I’ll go to the masquerade with you.”
His wolfish grin is just a little too victorious and it gives me a moment of panic, but he must see it, because he quickly dials it back.