Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Her gaze moved over my face, a slight dent between her brows. “I didn’t know people could excel at things they didn’t like,” she said. “I would think that the commitment to being excellent would demand a certain level of passion.”
Passion. There was that word again. “I’m good at a lot of things I don’t like,” I said. Why did I say that? Was it true? I turned a corner a little too fast, and Rory grabbed on to the handle near her head and let out a short laugh.
“Why bother putting in the time to be great at something if it brings you no joy?” she asked. “I mean, I know people have to do jobs they don’t like sometimes out of necessity, but recreation?”
“It made my dad happy. Like I said, he made a lot of sacrifices. But both my parents not only worked hard to live the life they live but worked hard for a family too. They tried for many, many years to have children, and had all but given up when I came along. In fact, they had already started adoption proceedings when my mom miraculously got pregnant with me. The doctors had told her it was practically impossible and yet…there I was. My sister Lexi was placed in our home when I was only six months old which is why we’re so close in age.”
The consolation prize, she jokingly called herself. Meaning I, of course, was the main prize, the one they’d never expected but gotten anyway. Their windfall. They’d have cancelled their application with the adoption agency if they’d have thought of it when Mom found out she was pregnant, Lexi once told me. But then they got the call that a birth mother had chosen them, she’d gone on, and they didn’t think there was an out and so they just went ahead and took me, even though they’d already received what they really wanted in you.
The thing was? She was probably right. And I didn’t say that because my parents weren’t generous, kind people who loved Lexi completely. A little old-fashioned maybe, but my father had wanted a son to follow in his footsteps, an heir who cared just as much about the company he’d poured his heart and soul into building from the ground up. He’d wanted to give the life he never had to his children, and he wanted to be assured that all the sacrifices he’d made were because he was leaving a legacy that meant the Buchanans who came after him would have the wealth and security he never did growing up.
And honestly? It was a good thing I’d come along, because Lexi had absolutely no interest whatsoever in the world of business.
Rory was watching me with that look on her face that told me her wheels were turning. “Oh, I see,” she said. Yes, she probably did. I knew what she was thinking, not just because she’d said a version of it before, but because if I had been looking in from the outside, I might have thought the same thing: that’s a lot of pressure. And…yes, okay, it was. And being with Rory, stepping out of the box I’d lived in all my life—even temporarily—was making me realize how much. But should I feel sorry for myself because I lived a life of luxury, complete with the guarantee that there was a multimillion-dollar company waiting for me to run? How many others would give their left arm to have that kind of “pressure”?
“I know it sounds like pressure,” I said, voicing my thought. “And it is, but, God, it’s also luck. I was born into this life of extreme privilege where I’ve wanted for nothing, my whole life. I’ve been showered with love.” I paused, picturing that look my father got on his face when I met or exceeded what I understood to be his expectations—pride mixed with this intense gratitude like I was everything he’d always wished for and more. “If my father, who brought himself up from nothing, wants a legacy, why shouldn’t he get it?”
“Because you’re not a legacy, you’re a human soul,” she said quietly.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel, her words causing something to fill my throat that I had to work to swallow down. I also felt inexplicably defensive. “It doesn’t seem like such a hardship,” I said.
“Being perfect?”
I let out a bark of laughter and I could hear that it sounded as defensive as I felt. “No one’s ever asked me to be perfect.” I vaguely remembered saying something about not being perfect when we’d had sex, but I couldn’t recall more than that. Hopefully she didn’t remember my exact words either because I hadn’t been in control of what I was saying, my thoughts spilling out of my mouth uninhibited, the filter between my brain and my tongue melted away by the surge of lust. But that was likely honesty, right? I’d have been hard-pressed to come up with a lie in those heated moments. And so…okay, perhaps no one had ever come right out and asked me to be perfect, but I was very aware that that’s what my family expected me to reach for.