Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
I shook my head hard, cutting him off. “No. You can’t do anything, okay? We can’t enmesh our lives beyond what we already have.”
I felt the muscles of his stomach tighten, like he was absorbing a blow. His hand slipped from my hair. “Understood.” His voice was a degree harder and colder than before.
I wrapped my arms around him and held on tightly. “For my sake more than yours.”
Dominic’s hand came back to my hair, heavier than before. His muscles relaxed, but he didn’t say anything. Both of us knew we were playing with fire, but I’d broken the silent understanding that we wouldn’t talk about how we were going to get burned, no matter how careful we were.
There was no way to stop it. It was a forest fire that we couldn’t control. We just had to let it burn itself out and hope that there was still something left in the aftermath.
25
DOMINIC
For the first time, I resented work. It used to be my life, and now it was a pain-in-the-ass chunk of time that interrupted what I really wanted to be doing, which was being with Selena. The worst part was, I was with Selena at work, but it was a warped mirror version of being with her. It was unnatural to see her and not be able to touch her. To hear her laugh and not smile reflexively. To go our separate ways at the end of the day, like we weren’t going to end up right back in my bed where we always did.
On Tuesday night, I met my friends for happy hour. All five of us didn’t often get together anymore with the wives and kids in the mix. Only Julian and I were still single, and that description didn’t fit well anymore. Single implied I was looking, that I could be interested in any woman who wasn’t Selena, and that wasn’t the case.
And my friends noticed.
“What’s going on with you?” Landon frowned, his eyes narrowing on mine. “There’s a table of models behind you, and you’re still looking at me like you’re actually paying attention to what I’m saying.”
“I am,” I said irritably. “I heard every word of your boring story about Paw Patrol Live. The dog scared Emma. The songs were shit. It’s thrilling stuff.”
Landon didn’t look amused, but it took a lot more than my mouth to offend him. Otherwise, our friendship wouldn’t have lasted that long.
“It’s his junior associate,” Julian volunteered after a silent moment in which my friends tried to make sense of me. “You should have seen him at the company happy hour.”
I shot him a shut the fuck up look down the table, but Garrett and Con were already leaning in, interested. Landon folded his arms across his chest and leaned back, satisfied. He’d called it. Julian had confirmed it. Now they expected me to fill in the details. I blew out my breath in a disgusted sigh. It was hard to remember now, but I was pretty sure my friends used to be interesting. Now they just wanted to talk about families and shit, and nothing would make them happier than to drag me into the marital cage alongside them.
“You said junior associate,” Garrett said, a smirk forming on his mouth. I’d given him the most shit when he fell in love with a twenty-five-year-old actress. Not because I cared about her age, but because he was the last person I thought would defect from our team and join Con and Landon in the land of nauseating coupledom. “How junior is she, exactly?”
“She looked about,” Julian rubbed his chin judiciously, “twenty-three.”
“She’s twenty-five,” I snapped. “And she isn’t going to be my junior associate for long. She’s going to another company, or maybe starting her own.” Just because Selena wasn’t willing to let me get involved with her and Christi’s event planning business idea didn’t mean I wasn’t going to push her toward it.
“That sounds serious,” Con said, raising his eyebrows. “She’s leaving Bryans Wealth so that you two can…”
“She’s leaving the company so that I don’t have to craft my own severance package,” I corrected before he could even get the words out. “Not so we can get married.”
“I think I’ve seen this movie before.” Julian looked meaningfully at Con, Landon, and then Garrett. “And you know how it ended, every single time?”
Of course I knew. I’d been to the weddings, hadn’t I? And each time, I’d looked up at my friends standing at the altar with bemused, pitying bewilderment. Yeah, their brides were beautiful, but were they really pledging the rest of their lives to one gorgeous woman when we lived in a city full of them? But then, here I was, apparently ignoring a table full of models, counting down the minutes until I could stop pretending to care about Landon’s kid and get back to Selena. I’d leave right now except that I knew she was still at Mrs. Kloss’s.