Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 130673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
And you.
It was fascinating to me to watch a parent actually want to spend time with their kid. Mine had sent me by foot to knock on people’s doors for spontaneous playdates when I was as little as five just to get rid of me.
“Certainly, we can.” Cherrie nodded, frowning at an iPad in her hand. “Or, I should clarify, we normally can’t, since we’re at full capacity and committed to our current clientele, who always reenroll, but Jolene Marshall is my sorority pal, and she asked for this favor. I understand Daddy Rhyland here spoke to Bruce about you wanting to go back to school?” Cherrie smiled.
Dylan shot me a death glare. Completely off-topic, but I was willing to pawn my other Rolex and a kidney just to hear her call me Daddy Rhyland.
“I don’t want you to feel deceived,” Dylan answered Cherrie, her eyes still firing poisonous switchblades at me, “so I think you should know I’m not planning to enroll in college in the immediate future. It’s just a thought.”
“That’s all right.” Cherrie patted Dylan’s arms, and that was when I realized we were still holding hands thirty minutes into this thing and that I wasn’t hating it at all. “I’d be happy to accommodate you either way. Any friend of the Marshalls is a friend of mine.”
Dylan turned to Cherrie. “Okay. What’s the damage?”
Cherrie slid her iPad pen over the screen. “For three times a week, nine a.m. drop-off and two thirty p.m. pickup, you are looking at twenty-two hundred dollars a month. That includes a hot lunch, snacks, and three sets of school uniforms a year.”
Dylan paled, and her jaw went slack. Yeah. This was…substantial as fuck. Welcome to the Upper East Side.
I got that she didn’t want Row to pay her way. I did. I even appreciated that. But couldn’t she suck it up and have him pick up the check while she studied for her future? This kind of money didn’t even register to Row. He probably paid more per month for his fucking white truffle honey habit.
“That won’t be a problem,” I drawled.
“That might be a problem.” Dylan shook off my touch, finally breaking our contact, and I hated that I already missed it—and hated even more that she wiped our joined sweat from her palm off on her dress. “I’ll need to look into my finances. Can I have a day or two?”
“You can even have a week or three.” Cherrie smiled at her with the infinite warmth of a mother who knew the struggles of expensive childcare. “I will need to know by the end of next month, though. Before summer camp begins.”
“That’s plenty of time,” Dylan said. “Thank you.”
The drive back to our apartment building was drenched in pensive silence. Gravity nodded off again as soon as we put her into her seat. I could hear the wheels in Dylan’s head churning.
Finally, when we were just about to turn toward the building’s garage, I said, “You need to bite your tongue and ask Row for a loan. If you don’t secure yourself a good job now, you’re going to regret it.”
“You have no idea what it feels like to be the loser sibling.”
“I have a pretty good idea of what it feels like to be the loser friend,” I countered dryly. “Think about it. My best friends are Row, multimillionaire, famous chef; Kieran, the second coming of Jesus in the soccer world with literal fucking movies made about him; and Tate, who is marginally more powerful than God himself. And here I am, pawning my goddamn watches to afford a fake girlfriend.”
“Fiancée,” she corrected. “And it’s not the same.”
“It’s exactly the same. We’re both the wild cards. The ones who took a bad turn and didn’t make it. But don’t double down on one bad choice.”
I hated that I sounded like a disapproving aunt, but I happened to know firsthand how cruising along where life took you could be dangerous. I bit down on my tongue.
Don’t open up more than you have to, idiot.
Oh, the hell with it.
“Look, three months ago, I got sexually assaulted by a client.” Bitterness exploded in my mouth. It was the first time I’d admitted it out loud. The first time I’d told anyone about it. My friends thought I quit because I couldn’t be bothered anymore.
Dylan sucked in an audible breath, turning to look at me. The car glided down the road to the parking garage.
“We were at a weekend-long engagement party in the Hamptons. Her ex’s. She wanted to pretend she’d moved on. She got drunk. I did too. We shared a room…” I felt my nostrils flare and my chokehold on the steering wheel tightening. A sheen of sweat was covering my forehead. What the hell was wrong with me? I couldn’t stop oversharing with this woman.