Total pages in book: 156
Estimated words: 151044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
He was worth the pain and tears.
He was worth anything because he was my entire world.
Not loving Hale would be as impossible as trying to stop a wave. So I pretended the public criticism didn’t hurt and went with the flow, surrendering to the currents that beat me into the banks of this overwhelmingly opulent, superficial, super-critical billionaire world. Because that was the world Hale lived in and I only wanted to be by his side.
I massaged my face and groaned, waiting for this horrible zombie malaise to wear off. I could only imagine what I looked like. I should probably shower before he saw—or smelled—me.
I couldn’t recall ever feeling this shitty before.
I tried to get up again and failed. It was going to take a crane to conquer gravity this morning. Fuck, even my skin hurt.
Slathering my tongue around my dry lips with the grace of a cow, I sighed. “Babe?” I nudge him. “D’you have water?” Ack, my mouth tasted like a bum’s pocket.
The fact that Hale wasn’t springing out of bed told me he felt shitty too. And he was the responsible one.
Flopping my weak arm over his back, I limply smacked him. “Hey, what’d we do last night?”
The agony in my head radiated to my teeth. If I learned anything from my time with the Davenports, it was that rich people had weird cures for everything. There must be an IV treatment to fix this. Some kind of mineral, or electrolyte cocktail that would make me feel human again. Either that, or I’d be lurching down the aisle like a leftover from Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Ugh. I cringed. All of high society would witness my shame and Hale would probably look perfect, as usual. The paparazzi would have a field day with that. We literally had to contact air traffic control to ensure no unlicensed drones would be flying overhead the moment we said our I-dos.
How the hell did this become my life? No way did Cinderella have to deal with this shit. Definitely needed some electrolytes. And coffee. And a few ice packs.
For the last few months, I lived in a petri dish of scrutiny as the world judged me through the lens of the most unflattering microscope. The paparazzi picked apart each pore and poked every tender insecurity I couldn’t hide. I had no choice but to stomach their confusion over Hale’s love for me like a full-body bruise that never healed.
Photographers and reporters flocked to my future husband like a herd of screaming goats gleefully prancing into the Alps. They reveled in his attention and would go to any lengths to be near him.
I was now a part of his world. A big part. So of course they watched me too. But I didn’t wear publicity nearly as well as my flawless fiancé.
Hale adorned the papers like a Park Avenue cover model while I became meme fodder for the next generation. They admired, praised, and celebrated him. As Hale’s pedestal got higher it cast a longer shadow, which gave me, his “overly ordinary”, “slightly tubby”, “bridge troll” of a fiancée a place to hide.
Yes, they actually printed those things about me in ink.
The public couldn’t rationalize our relationship and I developed a masochistic curiosity about what horrible thing they might say next. I became the ultimate head-scratcher of high society. I’d love to say I was a big enough person not to care, but the volume of bad pictures and cruel headlines was too much for even the strongest person to survive unfazed.
I needed to know. I hated to know. I vowed to never read another tabloid again. I broke those promises. Then I secretly cried and repeated the process all over again—with much ice cream therapy of course.
Of course, the paparazzi idolized Hale. Who wouldn’t? They thought I wasn’t good enough for him. Deep down, I believed that, too, so they found my Achilles heel. But whenever I second-guessed our situation or feared Hale might come to his senses and leave me, he used his sexiness like a weapon of mass persuasion to calm my nerves and convince me I was exactly where I was meant to be.
The man had the compelling power of a sex sorcerer. Seriously, I craved his physical touch more than dairy, and that was saying a lot, especially since I never even liked sex before Hale. But right now, there was absolutely nothing sexy about me.
I felt around the cluttered nightstand for the phone. What felt like a glass bottle clattered and rolled, falling to the carpet with a soft thud. I gave up.
Obviously, I’d been slipped a CIA-grade numbing agent.
Tranquilized, yet somehow still aware of the pain spiking up my legs.
Did I walk on a bed of fiery coals last night? A sheet of nails or broken glass?