Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 61953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
“You know why I’m here.”
“It’s our date.”
“It is.”
“Chase!” she said with a headshake. “Do you have a death wish?”
“I had to do it.”
“You did?”
I nodded. I wanted nothing more than to touch her in that moment. To kiss her. To claim her. But she was right; this wasn’t the way to tell her family. This was a way for me to get run out of town. I’d only come to speak my piece.
“I want this. I want you,” I told her. “I don’t care about you going to Harvard. I don’t care about your family. I don’t care about my family.”
Her eyes glistened with delight at the words. “You want me?”
“I have for three years, baby girl.”
She nodded. “And my brothers?”
“Fuck ’em,” I said inelegantly. She snorted a laugh. “We’ll make it work.”
“Oh my God,” she said on a laugh. “Shut up! They’re going to hear you. They’re already freaking out.”
“We won’t tell them like this,” I said. “You can tell them however you want. But I couldn’t go another day without letting you know.”
“That you want me,” she repeated blissfully.
“I’m yours. I always have been.”
She nodded. “Yes, yes, yes.”
“You’re mine?”
“Yes! Obviously.”
I laughed, a relieved smile spreading across my face. “I want to kiss you.”
“Maybe not your smartest move. I have more graduation stuff to do, but can I see you after? I have stuff to tell you. I want you to know first,” she said mysteriously.
“About what?”
She glanced back then. Someone had said her name. I checked and saw that it was Bailey, wide-eyed and gesturing for her to come on. She put a finger up and turned back to me.
“I’ll tell you after my party. And then we can decide how to proceed. Plan?”
“Whatever you want. We’ve waited long enough. What’s one more day?”
She took a step backward and nodded at me. I could see her heart in her eyes. She’d wanted this for so damn long. And so had I.
Whatever she had to tell me, I’d wait for that, too.
“I’ll be waiting,” I told her.
She smirked. “I know.”
Then, she hurried back to her friends and family. Whitt spoke to her, and I watched her shrug before she linked arms with Bailey and they buried their heads together. But Whitt turned back to look at me with narrowed eyes.
I didn’t want any trouble today.
It was her day.
So, I tipped my head at the Wrights and walked away.
In a matter of hours, she would be mine.
That was all that mattered after all.
24
Harley
“He came!” Bailey gushed into my ear.
“I know. I know. Shh!”
Bailey pulled me in closer. “Are you, like, fucking freaking out? Y’all haven’t spoken in months. You were going out of your fucking mind wondering if he’d be here. Or if you’d even fucking hear from him. And now, he’s here, in front of your whole fucking family.”
“I know,” I said, a shiver going down my spine. “I didn’t want to leave.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t kiss him.” Bailey shook her head. “If I were you, I’d have been half tempted to fuck his brains out right then and there.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Bailey!”
“What? You told me you did it before!”
“Yeah, but that was…not in front of anyone.”
She snorted. “Well, I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“So, what did he say? What are you going to do?”
A smile returned to my face. “He said he’s all in. He wants to be with me.”
“Harley, you’re leaving for Harvard in a few months.”
I waved my hand. “I’ll deal with that. We’re going to meet up after my party to talk.”
“To fuck,” Bailey said under her breath.
“That too,” I said with a laugh. “But also to figure shit out. It’s been so long. I wasn’t sure it would ever actually happen.”
“And now? You’re going to tell your brothers? I love Whitt. He took Eve and me in when we were at our lowest, but he is going to fucking lose it. He hates the Sinclairs after what they did to Eve.”
“I know,” I said on a sigh. “He has reason to, and it’s going to suck. But…I don’t want to hide forever.”
“Maybe just go to Harvard and be long-distance and tell them some other time, like when you’re across the country.”
I shot her a look. “They’d hate that even more.”
“Well, it sounds safer.”
She wasn’t wrong. Truthfully, I didn’t know what to do about them. They all had real reasons to hate the Sinclairs. Between Chase and Annie, Ashleigh’s betrayal, the Sinclairs trying to steal Piper’s winery, and everything that had gone down with Eve, not to mention Arnold knocking up an employee and only getting a slap on the wrist, I, too, hated the idea of them. It had been instilled in me early.
Then Chase had happened.
I should hate him, but he wasn’t his family.
I wasn’t my family either.
But half the battle was admitting that we wanted to come clean. No more hiding. And then what?