Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Oscar
I think Frank finally met his soulmate. Who knew he was into the whole strong, silent type?
Oscar
Happy Thanksgiving, Hugh.
It was his use of my name that struck me hardest. It felt so… personal. Intimate somehow. I scrolled back to our last exchange, except it hadn’t even been an exchange at all. He’d texted a picture of himself in a heather-gray T-shirt, with Frank curled up in a ball on his shoulder. I’d saved the image but forced myself not to reply. I hadn’t texted him in days, and still he’d reached out to wish me a happy Thanksgiving.
Suddenly, I didn’t just want him. I needed him. I was stranded alone in North Carolina with my sister hurt in New Jersey, and I needed someone familiar to keep me from spiraling and imagining the worst-case scenarios.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I clicked the phone icon at the top of the text chain.
Oscar’s voice, when he answered seconds later, was smooth and cultured and achingly familiar, despite our time apart. “Hugh? To what do I owe the pleasure?”
After all these months without talking to him, his voice was like a hit of a very powerful drug. I felt a kind of frantic energy churning through my blood.
“Hi. Hey. I, uh, I know calling is breaking the rules…”
“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.
I opened my mouth, then shut it, not quite sure how to respond to that. Had we really spent enough time texting for him to know something was wrong?
Through the phone, I heard china clink, then someone tittered loudly. “Hang on,” Oscar muttered. After murmuring something I couldn’t hear, he came back, this time with faint traffic noises in the background. I remembered vaguely he was spending the holiday weekend in the city with his mom, but I was hazy on the details. Oscar rarely discussed his family. “Sorry about that. What’s going on?”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” I began. “You must be at dinner. I didn’t even think—”
I broke off in frustration when the airport PA system began announcing the last call for a flight.
“Where are you?” Oscar demanded. “What’s happening?”
“I’m in Raleigh, remember? At the airport. Trying to get home as soon as possible.”
When Oscar spoke again, his voice was lower and more dangerous than I’d ever heard it. “Where’s J-bro? What did he do?”
“Who?”
“Your… date. The one you were spending the weekend with.”
“You mean Perry?”
Oscar paused. “Perry? Are you sure?”
I couldn’t hold back a soft snort. “Pretty sure, yeah. That’s what his ex-boyfriend was moaning when I caught Perry going down on him in his mother’s pantry before breakfast.”
“Oh, babe,” Oscar sighed. “Fuck. No wonder you’re upset.”
I shut my eyes at the endearment. Not a single part of me believed he’d said it in anything other than a friendly way, but still, the sweetness of that single syllable, the caring and understanding in it, slid through me like warm whiskey. God, I’d missed that. I’d missed him.
“I don’t care about Perry,” I said, surprised to realize it was true. “I’m upset because… you remember my sister, Abby?”
“Yes, of course.”
“She’s been in an accident. She’s at Beth Israel in Newark. All they’ll tell me is that she’s stable and she’s going to be okay, but I still haven’t talked to her yet, and all the damn flights out of this place are full for some reason, and I can’t get home to see her for myself, and I’m just—” My breath hitched. “I’m worried.”
There was a pause on the other end, and I immediately began to second-guess myself. Just because Oscar was important enough to me to be the person I wanted to talk to in a crisis didn’t mean I was that important to him. He had his own life. His friends. His… hookups.
And I was interrupting.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m sending a plane.”
I blinked, completely stunned. I wasn’t even sure what to say to that. Then, a horrifying thought entered my head. “That’s not why I called you,” I said, feeling slightly panicky that he might think that’s why I’d reached out to him in the first place.
“I know,” he said simply.
But did he? Given his wealth, he had to have scores of men throwing themselves at him just for his money. I didn’t want him to think of me the way. “I’m serious, Oscar. I appreciate your offer, I do, but you know I can’t accept that.”
He tsked dismissively. “You can and you will.”
“Oscar—”
“It’s Abby, Hugh.” His voice grew gentler. “She means everything to you, and she needs you, and you need to know she’s okay. Let me help.”
My throat grew tight, my eyes suddenly blurring. Oscar had a reputation as a playboy, as an eccentric, as a man about town. But to me, this seemed like the real Oscar: someone caring with a big generous heart. He knew that Abby was all I had left in the world.