Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 37793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 189(@200wpm)___ 151(@250wpm)___ 126(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 189(@200wpm)___ 151(@250wpm)___ 126(@300wpm)
“You were so different, so arrogant, George wouldn’t have looked twice at you.”
“Pardon me?”
“Plus, you know, you’re so much older than him.”
“He’s thirty,” he told her, sounding indignant. “You do know he’s thirty?”
“Yes, but you’re thirty-five,” she said with a grimace. “When you were a senior in high school, he wasn’t even there yet. He was in middle school.”
He glared at her. “You’re a terrible person, are you aware?”
She cackled, and the sound, so deliciously evil, so animated and fun, made Helene turn to us.
“Who are you talking to?”
“Our wedding planner,” Kurt answered. “I’m loving this restaurant.”
She laughed at him. Not with him. At him. “You would need to be marrying up for that, my friend, not down like you are.”
Thomasin gasped, I nearly choked on my drink, and Kurt’s face flushed as his fingers turned white on the sides of his phone with how tight he was clutching the case.
“No, no, no, come on,” I husked, waving a quick goodbye to Thomasin, hanging up, then twisting the phone out of his hand. “Love.”
He turned to me fast. “I’m so lucky. You know I’m so lucky.”
“And I feel the same,” I whispered in his ear.
Leaning into me, he put his head on my shoulder and sat there and breathed for a moment, his mind, I knew, going a million miles an hour.
“Talk to me.”
“I just… I have no idea why my mother even invited me,” he said, and I could tell his psychiatrist brain was fixated on getting to the answer.
“I have a guess.”
“You do?” He straightened up and leaned back so he could see my face.
“I do. And I think you do too.” I tipped my head and smiled at him.
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
After a moment he said, “Maybe she was worried because she hasn’t seen me in so long.”
I nodded.
“And perhaps frightened of her welcome.”
“Go on.”
“I mean, from speaking to Thomasin for that short amount of time, there will be no happy homecoming on that front.”
“Not in the near future, no.” There was no sugarcoating the fact that Thomasin was still, even more than Kurt, very angry.
“But with me, being the oldest, having more memories of her, perhaps she thought that’s the better place to start.”
“Makes sense.”
“She’s probably thinking that I can pave the road between her and Sin.”
I shrugged.
“But then why—”
“Imagine if you will—”
“Oh God,” he groaned but couldn’t suppress a grin.
“Wait now,” I said seriously, with a glare. “I’m thinking like you right now.”
“And I’m here for that, so go ahead.”
“So let’s say her husband is coming for a business trip, and she thinks, yeah, I could go along, and when we’re there, I could invite Kurt out to dinner with us. I’ll pick a fancy place where I’m sure he won’t make a scene, and if he’s hateful—”
“I’m never hateful.”
“If he’s been waiting to give it to me with both barrels, then I can make it through that if I have my family around me.”
His brows furrowed.
“I honestly don’t think you were an afterthought,” I told him, giving his mother the benefit of the doubt. “Why invite you at all if that was the case?”
“True.”
“I think all this, her husband, her kids, even the business, is a safety net.”
Sharp exhale from him. “Then why not excuse herself and come talk to me now that she knows I’m harmless?”
“You’re not harmless,” I reminded him. “You have a sharp mind, and you could eviscerate her with the truth about the part she did and didn’t play in your past.”
He was quiet, listening to me.
“And you can also figure out why she wouldn’t get up and come sit next to you.”
“Can I?”
“I suspect you learned this in Psychology 101,” I replied, holding his gaze.
He gave a barely there nod. “Because if she did that, she would have to explain who I am to these women who aren’t actually her friends.”
“That’s right.”
“Plus, she’s now in wife-of-business-mogul mode.”
“Exactly. She has to be as perfect as possible, as does the whole family. If they’re not flawless, that could be exploited.”
His sigh was long. “I’m really glad I don’t play at this level.”
“Me too.”
He leaned back into me, and I wrapped him in my arms. “I don’t get this from your boss.”
“What’s that?”
“The acting. Sutter doesn’t pretend to be perfect.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t have to. There’s no one he has to impress to make his business run. There’s no one higher up the food chain that he has to suck up to or that can hurt him with some piece of gossip. I mean, you’ve met Duncan Stiel. Flawless he’s not.”
“The way Sutter looks at him, you would think he is.”
“Which is pretty romantic, don’t you think?”
He grunted softly. “You look at me the same way.”
“Do I?”
His chuckle was nice to hear.
“Maybe you give your mother a second chance.”
“I don’t think it’s going to happen right now.”