Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
I stopped and placed a hand on my stomach as I inhaled sharply. That hit harder than I’d been ready for. They were together. At his house. Where his bed was. All night. He was protecting her. I’d seen her, and I knew without being told that she liked him. She hadn’t been able to keep her hands off him.
What about me? He didn’t want to protect me anymore? He was choosing to be her protector now?
“I’m making this worse,” he said.
“I, uh … good night,” I replied and bolted for the door before he could say anything more to me.
• Six •
The night couldn’t fix the reality of the next day.
Rumor
Maeme met me at the door, and her face instantly tensed as she took a good look at me. When she let out a sigh and reached for my hand to pull me inside, I felt myself start to crumble. If she tried to make me talk about this right now, I was going to fall apart. I needed some time to process it all.
“King’s gonna kill him,” she said with a shake of her head. “I need to go run interference. Go on up to the blue room and take a nice, long bubble bath. Don’t think about this.”
If it were only that easy to put all I had learned from my mind. But I wanted to be alone, so I just nodded.
She gave my hand a squeeze, then let it go. “I’ll bring you up something to eat soon.”
There was no point. I had no appetite. “I’m not hungry,” I told her, walking toward the stairs.
“Then, I’ll bring wine.”
I didn’t turn that down. Perhaps enough of it would numb this pain.
I was almost to the bedroom door when I heard Maeme’s voice demand, “What did you tell her?”
I didn’t wait to listen to any more of the conversation and closed myself off inside. As I stared at the bed, my thoughts went to last night and all that I’d done with King on that bed. The sheets would smell like him. I closed my eyes and winced at the idea of having to sleep there.
He was in a fake engagement to a gorgeous blonde he had history with. They were at his house, which I hadn’t even known about, and sleeping there. He was protecting her. Nothing about that could end well—at least for me. I had read this book before. Fake engagements, fake marriages, falling in love with the bodyguard. They had been some of my favorite romance tropes, but now … I hated them. All of them. Every single one.
My eyes stung as I walked through the room, dropping my bag on the bed and then heading to the en suite. Slipping my hand into the pocket of my shorts, I pulled out the phone and laid it on the counter, then stared at myself in the mirror.
The insults Hill had thrown at me all came rushing back. My top lip was too big, my hair too untamed, my skin too dark, my bottom teeth weren’t perfectly straight. I wasn’t stunning, like the women I’d seen with King. Like the woman in his house with him now. I knew I wasn’t ugly, but I had flaws. Enough that when put together, it made me very average.
Perhaps if I had a good sense of humor, then it would make up for where I was lacking, but my personality was lacking, at best. I’d had so many horrors in my past that I wasn’t friendly. I didn’t look on the bright side of things. I didn’t even have a high school diploma. I had a GED. Turning eighteen and being kicked out of state care halfway through my senior year had caused me to have to drop out. So, I didn’t even have a proper education and intelligence to fill in the gaps.
Scotlin was the kind of female that people expected King to be with. She was all the things I was not. She also knew him in ways that I didn’t. He’d taken her to his house. They had grown up together.
Me, on the other hand? I didn’t even know his favorite color.
There was a knock on my bedroom door before I heard it open.
“I have the wine,” Maeme announced just before she appeared in the bathroom doorway.
She held up an open bottle of red wine with a stemmed glass in the other. I watched as she sat it down then filled the glass more than halfway before sliding it over to me.
“I’ll go run your bath water. Drink.”
I didn’t argue. I took the glass and placed it to my lips. The cherry scent was one I was familiar with. Pinot noir had been Hill’s favorite wine.
“I know Sebastian dropped the Scotlin stuff on you, just like I know what you were doing in here last night with King,” she said as she bent over the tub, feeling the water temperature. “I’m sorry you found out the way you did. I’m not blind, and I can tell you’ve got feelings for King. This all must be real confusing for you. You’ve taken in a lot of information the past two weeks.”