Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Rather than acting on my impatience, I spend twenty minutes small-talking her. Bailey probably knows I’m here and it’s driving her mad I’m in no rush to see her. Good. Only after Mel and I cover every subject under the sun—weather, school, summer plans, college applications—do I finally ask, “Is Bails upstairs?”
“She better be.” Mel’s friendly smile morphs into a scowl. She looks like she’s aged five years in the last four days.
“Hey, thanks again for…” She swallows, her fingers fluttering the air to indicate, you know. She’s this close to bursting into tears.
I shrug. “Bailey saved my life every single day for two years straight after I lost Mom.”
“She was amazing,” Mel agrees. Past tense. Yikes. Bails is in the doghouse for real.
“Still is,” I say, low enough that Bailey can’t hear me from upstairs. “She’s just going through the adolescence she never had, I think.”
“Maybe,” she whispers. “I didn’t think you’d grow apart, you know.”
But we didn’t outgrow each other. Bailey outgrew me.
She changed, and I stayed the same. Stretched her wings when I wanted to clip them to ensure she never left. It backfired. Big time.
“Don’t let me keep you.” She steps back, wiping her eyes. “Please tell her food’s ready.”
I feel bad for Mel.
She means well. Everyone always criticizes her parenting skills, but the truth is, it’s fucking hard to raise two smart, independent girls. And mothers always get double the blame for everything. Nobody said shit about Dad back when Knight’s favorite hobby was blow and alcohol.
I take the curved marble stairway, passing floor-to-ceiling portraits of the entire family. Daria is impishly grinning back, wearing an Oscar de la Renta golden sequin dress. Bailey is in a blue sailor dress, embroidered with little flowers. Her smile is serene, polite, contained, her eyes two clear pools under a cloudless sky.
They’re so different it’s comical.
Daria is a she-devil who loves her parties and designer clothes. Bailey is an angel with a love for books and charities.
My stomach bottoms out when I step into the second-floor hallway of the Followhills’ house. Too many things have happened since I last saw Bailey. I have a new girl-something, and she has a new fucking drug problem apparently.
I follow the trail of warm vanilla and new book scent leading to her room.
I knock on the ajar door, then remind myself she’s an addict and doesn’t need privacy right now.
I barge right in. “Bailey?”
Someone jumps me from behind. Long, muscular legs coil around my back, her arms are circling my shoulders.
She giggles in my ear, her breath toasted cinnamon and vanilla. She’s fucking everywhere, gorgeous and alive and warm as a perfect August day, and for the first time in my life, I want to break her instead of mending her, because FUCK. THIS. SHIT.
She broke my heart, then went and almost killed the girl I love. Who does that to a person?
“Levy!” She plasters her lips to my cheek, oblivious to my mood. Her blond hair rains down on my face, an avalanche of yellow and gold. “Holy shrimp. I haven’t seen you in a few months and you’re the size of a town house now.”
She’s acting like Old Us. Our families labeled us #Bailev sometime before we turned six because we were inseparable. People shipped us. Everyone thought we’d become a couple.
No dice.
Slanting my gaze sideways, I ask dryly, “Sorry, do I know you?”
“Brainiac. Knows your darkest secrets. Obsessed with lists. Your best friend. Ring a bell?” She nibbles at my ear, and just like that, my entire bloodstream goes straight to my dick and I get light-headed.
Still, I play the part of the jaded asshole. “My best friends are mommy issues and a god complex. Try again.”
“Nope.” She rubs her smooth cheek along my stubbled one. My dick is seriously a second away from unzipping my ripped Amiri jeans and bursting out to say hi. “Those are your therapist’s best friends and the reason she owns a vacation house in Cancun.”
I don’t have a therapist, though I probably should get one, considering the amount of rage I’m bottling up inside these days.
“Get off my back, Bailey.”
“Or else?” She grins, and who the fuck is this girl?
Feeling like I’m goofing around with one of my fangirls and not my best friend, I reach to tickle her armpits and she falls on her back on the sheepskin carpet, giggling and kicking her legs in the air.
She’s wearing a pair of white boy shorts and a pink Nirvana hoodie. A Walmart bargain, I bet.
Her laughter in my ear and her body writhing beneath mine makes me feel like I’ve woken up from a long, lethargic sleep.
How can people find Bailey and Thalia remotely similar? Thalia is a daisy and Bailey is a rose.
Thalia is an open book, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kinda girl. I figured her out long before I laid a finger on her. Bailey is a tightly wrapped gift. Her velvet petals are clasped together firmly, each hiding another layer of her.