Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Calliope, from what I had gathered, was some kind of hotshot in New York and earned a shitload of money.
Or at least she had been, until she arrived in Jupiter, moved into Rowan’s old house, and wouldn’t tell anyone what exactly she was doing here.
No one, not even big brave Rowan, was game enough to press her on it.
“What tells you I’m running?” she replied over the top of her drink, regarding me with a penetrating gaze.
I looked at her, with the clothes, the jewelry, the purse, all worn casually, as if she were in sweats, but all expensive as fuck. I wasn’t really someone who paid attention to labels or whatever the fuck, but even I could tell it was fancy shit. Jupiter was nice. It was quaint. Quiet. Idyllic, even. But it was not full of trendy boutiques, swanky bars, or exclusive restaurants.
We were currently drinking at the only bar that was open past ten. The very same bar I had technically proposed to Kip in.
“You’re a long way from New York,” I pointed out.
Calliope swirled her olive. The bitch was drinking a martini. I didn’t think anyone actually drank those outside the movies. I’d ordered one when I first got to this country, excited to see what all the hype was about, but it tasted like rocket fuel. Pure vodka with an olive dipped in it did not a drink make.
“I’ll tell you what I’m running from if you tell me,” she countered.
My own drink froze inches from my mouth. “How do you know I’m running?”
She tilted her head to regard me. “You’re a fuck of a long way from Australia.”
I laughed. “Touché.”
People had asked me why I was in America and not in Australia, and I’d always had some cheeky reply, some half-baked story, but never the truth. I hadn’t shared that with my best friend. I’d buried it so deep I’d convinced myself it wasn’t even real.
Though I felt safe with Calliope, felt like I could tell her anything in the world without judgment or fear of her repeating it, I was not about to tell her about my past. Not just because I didn’t trust myself to dredge it up in a bar with sticky floors and dirty bathrooms. Also, because if there was one person I’d tell the truth to, it would be the woman who had been my best friend, my sister, for years.
Maybe I wouldn’t even tell her.
Maybe I’d keep it all tight inside, rotting, but only I could smell the decay.
“It’s a man,” Calliope said when I didn’t speak. “It’s always a man. Either they make a woman stay or run.” She looked at me with a knowing gaze. “And we’re both the kind of woman who runs if that man is a little too bad, or worse, just a little too good.”
“Which one are you running from?” I asked to hide my shock at how perceptive this bitch was. “The bad man or the good one?”
She sipped her martini.
“Both.”
It was around then that the trouble started.
Kip came to bail us out.
I really wanted to use my one phone call on Nora. But she’d just had a baby, and she did not need to be bailing her best friend and sister-in-law out at midnight.
Tina would come.
Tiffany would come.
Fuck, Frank would come.
But all of those people would ask why I wasn’t calling my husband to come get me.
I had to call him. And I’d have to brave the ‘I told you so’ the fucker was nowhere near noble enough to let go unsaid.
“Told you you’d need to call me,” Kip said happily as we walked out of the police station.
No charges had been filed.
We’d been arrested by a cop I didn’t recognize. And that likely meant he was new in town. The bakery might not have served donuts on a regular basis, but we had the best pastries and coffee for miles. Every cop in town was a regular.
I’d told him as much.
He didn’t like that.
And he didn’t find my accent charming. He didn’t find Calliope to be a powerful knockout. Therefore, he arrested us.
He got a little too much satisfaction out of it, if you asked me. And he didn’t even arrest the men who started the brawl in the first place. Which showed he was a huge fucking misogynist and part of a dying breed of men who would eventually go extinct because no woman would want to fuck him.
I might’ve told him that too.
Which certainly didn’t help.
Luckily the sheriff did know who we were and got us out tout de suite—well, not suite enough, since I’d already called Kip—and our arresting officer looked like he’d gotten a swift talking-to.
That was something I enjoyed.
Until the sheriff apologized to Kip when he came to pick us up.
“Um, hello?” I waved my hand. “He’s not the one who got locked up. We are. And you apologizing to him for locking his wife up is all well and good if we’re residing in the 1950s, before women got the vote, but we’re here, and we’re complete people with rights and mouths to call you the fuck out with.”