Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 123579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
My voice teases him, but he knows I’m serious. I’m ready when he is, and he knows it.
“Your hopes won’t be the only thing ‘up,’ Sof, but tonight’s not our night.”
A chuckle percolates in my throat before spilling over, a rich sound only he could pull from me on the cusp of a conversation like the one I’m about to have with my mother.
“And you maintain that we’ll both know when it’s right?” I ring the bell even though I still have a key. My mother doesn’t much like surprises, so I’ll give her at least the warning of the bell.
“Yeah, I think we will.” He pauses, his voice more serious with his next words. “And I think we’re close.”
He’s saying two things, and I hear them both between the lines of what he’s actually saying. Yes, we’re closer than we’ve been to having sex. And halle-freaking-lujah for that. But he’s also saying we’re close. It’s exactly the word I think of when I consider what we’re doing, what we’re becoming. We’re becoming close. I’m letting him in, and I’m starting to understand that’s what he wanted. He didn’t want one intimacy without the other.
The door swings open, cutting off the things I want to say to deepen this feeling between us, even over the phone.
“I gotta go.” I walk past our housekeeper, Millie, into the foyer with its black and white tiles.
“You’ll call me when you’re done?” Concern creeps into his voice. “As soon as you’re done?”
“Bishop, I know how busy you are—”
“As soon as, Sof.”
God, he makes me….
“Okay, as soon as.”
“That’s my girl.”
He has no idea how good that sounds to me. What would it feel like to be his girl? To have all that care and sweetness and passion and fire aimed exclusively at me? I was the one resisting this, but now I want to lean into it so badly. This connection with Trevor is the silver lining in a very shitty cloud. I want to protect it from everyone who would question it, who would cheapen it, who would destroy it. The need to protect this connection rises so fiercely inside me that for a moment it steals my breath.
I walk deeper into the house and peer into the dining room, where my mother is already seated and eating her omelet. I drop my phone into my purse and walk in.
“Morning, Mother.”
My mother looks up from her grapefruit, a frown worrying her brows.
“Sofie, did I forget we had an appointment?”
Not exactly how I wanted to start.
“It’s good to see you, too.” I sit down across from her at the dining room table that seats ten, but usually holds only one for breakfast. My mother prefers it that way, but she’ll just have to put up with me for a little while today.
“Sofie, I’m not saying it isn’t good to see you.” That forced patience I’ve seen all my life enters her voice, settles on her face. “What can I do for you, sweetheart?”
We’ve never been close, and I regret that now more than I ever have. She was always beautiful and aloof, a maze of walls I could never figure out how to negotiate or scale to get on the other side. To get to her.
“Mom, I need to talk to you about some things that will be coming out soon.” I shake my head when Millie gestures at the empty plate in front of me. “No, thank you, though, Millie.”
I wait for Millie to leave the room before continuing.
“Things about …an incident from the past.”
“Surely not Señor Ruiz again. I heard he’s in New York.” She rolls her eyes. “Sofie, please leave that woman’s husband alone.”
The serrated spoon she digs into the soft, pink flesh of her grapefruit may as well be plunging into my heart. That’s how her comment feels. That’s how it hurts. When that scandal broke I was barely twenty years old, and my mother had nothing but chiding for me. No guidance. No comfort. Only criticism and censure.
“I want nothing to do with Esteban Ruiz.” My voice bounces off the walls of this cold room. “That’s not what I’m talking about, though it will probably come back up.”
“Sofie, dear, as much as I wish we had more of these little heart-to-hearts”—she glances at the diamond watch on her wrist—“I have a ten o’clock.”
She’s lying. Baker drives us all. He would have arranged a Bennett car for my commute if my mother had a ten o’clock appointment. He would have mentioned it. He would have known.
She wants to get rid of me. I wonder if my face disappoints her, the fact that I look like my father. If my actions, my life in most ways, have disappointed her. The chasm between us feels so deep and wide, I’m not sure my words will even reach her across it, but I have to try.