Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
“Let’s forget about it. We’re all going out tonight. I don’t want her to run back to California because of you idiots.”
“Fine. Fine,” Court said. “We’ll see how it goes tonight.”
You and me both.
Whitley was there before I arrived. I heard her laugh across the room before I caught a glimpse of her lavender hair, which stood out like a stoplight in the hip New York City rooftop bar. Club 360 was on the top floor of Percy Tower and the place to see and be seen. Since Camden owned the building, we’d been going here for years. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed Whit’s vivacious personality infecting the premises until now.
Katherine sat next to her, looking as prim and perfect as ever. Except she was laughing with Whitley, which was not normal. Katherine was one of those buttoned-up types. Few could bring out effusive laughter like that from her. Whitley was like that with everyone.
Camden leaned against the wall, watching his wife with predatory delight. He was slightly apart from what was happening, as was his norm, but he missed nothing as I walked inside. His eyes met mine, and he lifted two fingers in a hello.
I waved back. But the girls still hadn’t seen me, and I could hear the beginning of one of Whitley’s stories. She was known for them. The Crazy Adventures of Whitley Bowen™, as I lovingly referred to them.
“So, we had been dating for about a year …”
“A year?” Katherine gasped out. “Since when have you ever dated someone that long?”
“It was on and off …”
“What was his name?”
“Her name was Safia,” Whitley said, breezing over the question easily. “And unimportant. Can I finish my story?”
“Well, when you leave out all the good parts …”
“Anyway,” Whitley said. She waved her hands and continued forward. “When I walked into the room, the girl that she’d dated before me was in my bed.”
“No!” Katherine said.
“Yeah. I mean, she had clothes on and was sobbing about how she wanted to get back together, but she was there.”
“And Safia?”
“Gone. I didn’t know where, but the girl told me Saf let her in so … I mean, I assumed the worst. In my opinion that’s what happens. So, I did the only sensible thing …”
Katherine sighed heavily. “You walked out?”
“Oh, no. I made the fucking crying girl on my bed leave. Kicked her out and told her to cry somewhere else. Then, I took all of Safia’s shit, put it in a few boxes, and left it on the front step, had the locks changed before she got home.”
“Whitley! What if nothing had happened?”
“Then, I wouldn’t have walked in on this girl in my bed. I was paying for the apartment. Saf hadn’t paid a dime in six months. She was a struggling actress.”
“Well, serves her right for living off of you. I would have left if someone poor tried to take advantage of me.”
Whitley winced, and I winced with her. Such a Katherine thing to say. The point of the story wasn’t that Safia was broke. It was that she’d broken Whit’s trust, and in true Whitley fashion, she’d burned the entire relationship to the ground.
“Hey,” I said when I realized that Whitley was done.
Katherine and Whitley whipped around at the sound of my voice. It was then that I grasped they weren’t just laughing, they were drunk.
“Gavin King,” Katherine said, coming unsteadily to her towering high heels. “Come over here and say hello to my guest.”
Whitley’s cheeks turned a light pink. “Yeah, King, come say hi to me.”
“Whit,” I said, taking her hand like a gentleman and kissing it. Her gaze was locked on mine, and she shivered slightly as my lips grazed her skin. “Welcome home.”
“This isn’t home,” she said easily.
“Home is Texas for you both,” Katherine said with a wrinkle to her button nose.
“That’s not home,” we said in unison.
I laughed. Texas was where I had grown up and where my family was, but I didn’t miss it. That desolate hunk of land felt like work now. New York was home. It had been for me for a long time.
“Where’s home then?” I challenged.
“LA,” Whitley said.
I shook my head. “No way. You never would have taken this job if LA were home. No amount of money could have made you leave.”
She drew her hand out of my grasp. “You just don’t like California.”
No, I liked New York. There was something about the city. The atmosphere. The food and the park and the shows. You could be anyone or no one in New York City. I’d always been in the shadow of my cousins back home in Texas. Midland wasn’t exactly a small town, but the circle that I had grown up in, everyone knew everyone. In Manhattan, I could be as important or as invisible as I wanted.