Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 147(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 147(@300wpm)
Lola and I had decided on an impromptu movie night at her place. Or rather, Xavier Dane’s place, the Duke of Bandiff. Xavier was Lola’s legal guardian, after taking her in when her dad turned out to be this psychotic criminal. But, that’s a story for another time. Xavier was also way older, and way hot, in this silver-fox kinda way. Suffice it to say, we all had fun teasing Lola about her “Daddy Duke.”
“The car. My car.” I shrugged. “Did I park it weird or something?”
“What are you talking about?”
Right before the movie had started, while Lola was still upstairs taking a shower, Xavier had come bursting into the manor like some sort of wrecking ball — all angry and furious looking. For a guy who was usually pretty mellow and even-keeled, it was a little scary, not to mention totally out of character. I’d just assumed it was my crappy parking job leaving my new car right outside the main steps to the house.
“The Duke, when he came home, he seemed—”
“You know you can just call him Xavier.”
“Okay, well, he seemed pissed when he came home.”
“Nah, that was…” Lola shrugged and looked away. “It was nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Johnny Depp did something or other on the movie, and the big screen of the home theatre flickered. I glanced over just in time to see Lola frown a little
“Wait, do you have a new car by the way?”
“Uh.” My face flushed as I looked away.
…Yeah, hadn’t really mentioned that yet. I hadn’t mentioned anything at all about Cole to any of my friends. I knew, it was weird. And I knew the first thing I should have done after finding an aspirin that morning in Paris was call my friends and tell them about my hilarious drunk marriage to a Prince. I mean, they’d have got it. They’d have laughed, of course, but they’d be there for me and I knew it.
But I hadn’t, and I was still trying to figure out why. Maybe part of me thought that if I hid it away as just something between Cole and me, then it would stay hidden. Or maybe I thought if I didn’t let anyone out of our little two-person bubble know about it, then it wouldn’t really be real.
Which, for the record, sounded totally insane to me too.
But then, that’d been before, when I was still appalled at myself for what I’d done — when I was still hunting for tattoo removal clinics and ways to annul this dumb thing. But now, after everything that’d happened? After letting him inside my heart, and feeling his words deep inside and knowing that they were real, I wasn’t sure anymore.
Why wasn’t I telling my friends?
I guess deep down, it was because I was still trying to figure it out myself.
I cleared my throat as I stared at the screen instead of Lola. “Uh, I guess I sorta have a new car.”
“Sorta? You sort of have a new car?” Lola smirked at me, giving me this curious look. “Faith, you can’t ‘sort of’ have something. I think it’s like being pregnant. You either are or your not. You’re not sort of pregnant.”
“Okay no one is pregnant,” I said quickly, blushing furiously in the semi-darkness.
“Well, we’d have to actually be getting laid for that to happen.”
…Right, I guess part of “Operation Don’t Tell Your Best Friends About Cole” was not having told Lola that I’d lost my v-card. I felt a little guilty keeping that one close, but like I said, I had to figure this all out before I dropped that bombshell on them.
“So, the car?”
“Yeah it’s this whole thing,” I waved my hand like it was nothing, nodding at the screen. “I love this part.”
But I could feel Lola’s eyes burning into me in the darkness, and I squirmed. Shit. Lola was kind of a bloodhound for sniffing out bullshit. She always had been. And dammit, now she had those lasers of hers tuned in on me.
“Yeah, so, go on? About the car?”
I shook my head, still not looking at her. “It was a gift, okay?”
“From?”
I sighed heavily. Fuck, she was not going to let this go. “Can we just drop it?”
“Okay, okay,” she finally sighed. “Fine. Be like that. But you know I’m not going to let this go, right?”
I groaned, grinning at my firecracker friend. “It would shock me if you did. But later, okay?”
She shrugged as she turned back to the movie screen. “Fine.”
…That lasted about forty-eight seconds.
“So does this have anything to do with that tattoo you’ve been trying to hide all night?”
My breath caught, and I sneaked out a gasp as I yanked at my long sleeve, pulling it down into my palm to hide the rose, even if it was clear she’d seen it.
“I— this.” I shook my head. “No, that’s just this, you know, this thing.”