Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“She’ll notice if it’s not there. Spouses always notice. If she takes this to her own attorney, they’ll notice too. And with the verbiage you want me to add, any lawyer with half a brain cell can see this thing is tipped generously in the husband’s favor.”
“Damn. Okay. Get creative then.”
“You want me to write a prenup that looks fair at first glance, but secretly gives you an out so you can cheat and still walk away a rich bastard in the end.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. I do this sort of shit all the time for other clients. It shouldn’t be that hard to do it for my best fucking friend. But there’s a weight in the pit of my stomach. A hesitation.
“Exactly.”
My cell phone vibrates next to my computer mouse.
“Grant, my sister’s calling. Let me get back to you about this later.” I return the receiver to its cradle and take Claire’s call. “What’s up?”
“Hey! So your party is next weekend …”
“Yeah?”
“But we’ve had a handful of guests who originally RSVP’d yes but have since had to cancel …”
I lean back. “Okay. And you’re telling me this why?”
“Well, the party invite is on Facebook,” she says. “And you no longer have a Facebook account. But a bunch of people are posting old pictures of you in this group and writing well-wishes and asking questions about you. I just think you should reactivate your account so you can respond to some of them.”
“No.”
“One week,” she says. “Reactivate it for one week then you can go dark again.”
“No.”
She laughs. “Then give me your password and I’ll reactivate it and post as you.”
“Hard no.”
“Seriously though. Some of these pictures on here are freaking hilarious. I forgot you used to get highlights. You looked like a boyband-er. And remember when you used to tan all the time?”
Good God. “Who the hell posted those?”
“If you logged on, you’d see …”
I groan.
“Oh, and have you seen Grant’s new fiancée? She’s freaking gorgeous. They’re going to make beautiful babies someday. They look really happy together.”
I bite my tongue, unable to tell her about Grant’s attempt to fuck her over in this prenup.
“Oh! Gotta go. Luke’s beeping in.” My sister ends the call, and I slump back, dragging in a ragged breath as I tap on the App Store icon and re-download the Facebook app I swore off a lifetime ago.
Three minutes later, I’m logged in and welcomed back.
I wade through a hundred notifications until I find the invite to the party, and I accept it.
A flood of images, most of them older than fucking time and would be embarrassing as hell if I were the kind of guy who gave a damn what people thought of me.
Halfway down the page, I click on an image Grant posted eleven hours ago—one of the two of us in London our senior year of college, when we had a competition to see how many English girls we could bag. For the record, he won because his standards were arguably looser than mine. But to this day, I get hard anytime I hear a beautiful woman speak with received pronunciation.
I smirk at how young, stupid, and piss-poor we were at the time.
Never would’ve believed we’d have both come so far in such a small amount of time, but here we are …
I click on Grant’s profile to check out his pictures since Claire said his bride-to-be was drop-dead gorgeous and I’d like to see the face of the woman we’re about to fuck over—should I agree to trash my morals.
I expect to find a generically beautiful stranger with a sun-kissed glow and desperation emanating off her body in the form of fake tits and an exercise addiction—because historically that’s been Grant’s type.
Only the woman smiling ear to ear in his profile pic, her arms wrapped around Grant’s shoulders identified as “Brie White” … is the woman from the bar last week—who also happened to be the woman from my dream.
And now she’s marrying my best friend.
I sink back. Gutted. Hollowed.
She told me in the bar that she was planning to leave her fiance—but now that I know it’s Grant and now that I know how thirsty he is for a drink of her family’s fountain of wealth … he’ll never let that happen.
And even if he did—it wouldn’t change the fact that I could never have her.
I would never do that to him.
No amount of justifying will ever change the fact that she’s off-limits.
15
Brie
I return to my apartment Friday night with every intention of chucking my suitcase into my closet to be dealt with later, uncorking a bottle of sweet red, and drawing myself the hottest, bubbliest bath in the history of mankind while I rid myself of airport grime. When I was finished with all of that, I fully intended to crawl into bed solo and lose myself in the book I started on the plane but didn’t have time to finish thanks to the chatty man across the aisle.