Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 110694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Bastian Draughn hadn’t broken my heart. I wasn’t looking at the bottle of Tito’s, contemplating getting blackout drunk over his marrying Idris. It was more of the painful fact that I was having to stand back and watch her make a huge mistake. But she didn’t see it that way.
Bastian had targeted her a year ago after I turned down his marriage proposal and broke up with him. But she refused to believe he’d ever proposed to me. As if I would lie about that. Being the nonconfrontational person I was, I let it go. Gave her my blessing, although I didn’t think she really would have cared either way, but at least she’d asked me. Granted, they had been talking on the phone and meeting for coffee for over two weeks by the time she got around to asking me if I was okay with her going on a date with him. I hadn’t wanted her to because I knew she was the rebound. He was trying to get to me. When his calls, flowers, love notes—sent to the office I worked in at his father’s dairy farm—hadn’t worked, he had gone after my best friend.
The love notes hadn’t stopped right away. He had been dating Idris and was still swearing I was the only woman he would ever love. Bastian was a spoiled rich kid who had been given everything he wanted. He was attractive and never had a female tell him no. My doing so was something he hadn’t expected or handled well.
Now, here we were, one week away from his wedding to my best friend—although I couldn’t really call her that anymore. The girl I had met in high school and who I’d survived our twenties with, living in a shitty apartment together that we loved, was gone. She didn’t text or call me much these days. I was her fiancé’s ex, and even though I wasn’t in the wrong, she seemed to feel as if she had to keep me close but still at arm’s length.
That was what hurt the most. Losing Idris. In the end, Bastian had gotten the last laugh, it seemed. He’d stolen her. The person I trusted most. She had been the closest thing I had to family. After my father’s death, I’d been left with an aunt who put up with me until I was old enough to move out. Idris had filled that void. Until she chose Bastian over me. I hadn’t even asked her to choose.
There had been other guys before Bastian, but none I had gotten as serious with. It wasn’t until I moved out of my aunt’s that I went on my first date. She never allowed me to date. Most guys I went out with a few times, then ended things. I always saw their flaws. I started dating Bastian when I was twenty-six and my being a virgin at that age gave him some weird sense of ownership over me. He hadn’t believed me when I told him I had never had sex, up until the blood on the sheets and his penis had proven I wasn’t lying.
Shaking my head, I rolled my eyes at my stupidity and drank down the rest of my cosmopolitan. I was thirty-three years old. I had wasted six years of my life with that man, never really loving him. He was just someone who wanted me. I had finally let go of my fantasy man. The one who would check all my boxes. The ones that had been set in place since I had been a kid. The reason I had held on to my virginity for so long. No one was ever the right one. No one was ever the outlaw my memory wouldn’t let me forget.
I turned on the stool to see Idris already drunk, dancing with her hands in the air, along with two of her other bridesmaids. They were her new friends. Danielle was Bastian’s best friend’s new girlfriend—well, new, as in he hadn’t started dating her until after I broke up with Bastian. They had been together eight months now. Evie was her current roommate. Seemed Idris had felt awkward, having Bastian over to our place after they got serious, and in a fit of tears, she’d told me she had to move out and hoped I understood.
What I had understood was, she was leaving me with a rent payment I couldn’t manage on my own. We’d long since moved out of the shitty first apartment. Once we got real jobs that paid well, we moved on up in the world. She had decided college wasn’t for her after only one year and gotten her real estate license, then began working for her mom and stepfather’s agency. I hadn’t been given the opportunity to attend college. My aunt wouldn’t cosign with me for a loan, but then I’d never expected her to. I had gone right into the work field, having been a bank teller, bartender, and lastly a secretary at Draughn Dairy, which was where I met Bastian. It had good insurance, a 401(k), and paid me well. However, the apartment we had been living in was still too steep for my paycheck alone, so I’d also had to downgrade to a studio, but I had found being alone wasn’t so bad.