Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Fighting my parents will always be a losing battle.
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason for that,” Mom says, her voice as pleasant as watermelon mint punch on a hot summer’s day. “I heard we might be getting some snow tonight? Always better safe than sorry.”
Judging by the sun blinding the clear Maine sky and melting all the snow, I’m doubtful on that forecast. Regardless, I couldn’t care less what his reasons are for postponing his trip. If anything, I’m secretly celebrating the fact that I don’t have to entertain his insufferable presence tonight.
“Excuse me, Addison. I’m terribly sorry. I just need to make a quick phone call to the house.” Mom trots off with her cell in hand, her coiffed blonde bob bouncing with each hurried stride. I imagine she’s calling the chef to tell him the family dinner we were supposed to have with my beloved will now be tomorrow night. If she’s lucky, he hasn’t already started on the beef Wellington and baked Alaska—Slade’s two favorite dishes.
Slade’s visits before were always few and far between, but now that we’re full speed ahead on the wedding, his presence is required for various meetings and parties thrown by our families. I’ve seen him more in the last six months than I had in the last six years, and from now until August, he’ll be making monthly trips here.
At some point soon, I’ll start flying back with him as we set up our new life together in his hometown of Palm Beach, Florida where I’ll, no doubt, stick out like the sorest of sore thumbs.
“Are you excited?” Addison asks while we wait for my mom’s return. She scrunches her shoulders in and flashes me an awkward smile that tells me she hates small talk just as much as me. I wish I could tell her she doesn’t have to do any of this … make small talk or treat me like a regular bride.
But alas, I can’t.
In fact, the whole arranged marriage thing is protected with an ironclad NDA baked into a brassbound pre-nup. All it’s missing is a notarization from the devil himself—though our longtime family attorney is close enough.
Regardless, it kills me knowing that everyone around us—from my closest friends to my darling sweet elderly ladies I volunteer with—thinks I’m head over heels in love with Slade, that I would choose him on purpose.
All they know is “we’re old family friends” and “our parents are thrilled that we’re marrying.”
“They say opposites attract,” Stassi told me when I first shared the news with my girlfriends. We were having dinner and I showed them a handful of photos I screenshotted from some Miami magazine that did a lifestyle photo shoot with Slade. I didn’t have a single candid shot of him in my phone, nor did I have anything of us together.
As she passed my phone to Elise, Elise squinted before saying, “He looks expensive.”
Internally I rolled my eyes because Slade would take that as a massive compliment, but then Elise clarified by saying she meant “expensive” as in “being with someone like him might require a lot of therapy if it ever blows up in your face because holy-effing-shit he’s gorgeous.”
“Okay, ladies, I’m back.” My mother takes the chair between us. “Where did we leave off?”
As she and the florist talk amongst themselves, I zone out, thinking about all the things I’d rather do than marry Slade Delacorte—if only fate would allow.
But the thing about fate is that it has never been on my side.
I don’t expect it to start now.
.
Campbell—
My mom said I had to write you a nicer letter this time.
But I don’t have anything nice to say to you.
Slade (age 8)
Slade—
Do you have friends? Because you sound like a jerk. I would never be friends with someone like you.
Campbell (age 7)
Campbell—
Good. I don’t want to be friends with you either.
Slade
(age 8)
3
Slade
We’re wheels down at the Sapphire Shores municipal airport at exactly 6:02 PM. While I’d love to fly into, say, Portland, or anything with more than a few thousand inhabitants, my trusted flight crew insists this is the most efficient path. And they’re not wrong—it’d just be nice to see some semblance of city lights now and then as opposed to a place that could be wiped off the map in a heartbeat and no one would even know it’s gone.
Why anyone would choose to live in this godforsaken one-stoplight town is beyond me.
It looks like a 1980s postcard and it smells like the ocean—in a rotting seaweed and trash island kind of way.
Palm Beach at least smells good.
Like money.
Ambition.
Confidence.
Freshly waxed sports cars.
Italian cologne.
Exotic flowers.
Top shelf liquor.
The electric energy in the air is palpable the moment you step outside.
Sapphire Shores is the kind of place people go when they want to pretend we’re not living in a world two seconds from some nuclear war every second of every day. The kind of place where people have vegetable gardens in their back yards and potato sack races at Fourth of July picnics. The kind of place where people eat at the same mediocre restaurants for decades because even though the food sucks, it’s all about tradition and history. The kind of place where it doesn’t matter who the president is because they’re all in their own little world anyway.