Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Maybe he broke it a couple of times.
Plus his cheekbones are even more pronounced now. They always made hollows slanting down to his scruffy jaw but now they’re deeper, his jaw is even more square. Like time has chiseled away at his features, his body, making everything even sleeker and sharper.
The biggest change, however, is in his hair.
Something that’s been really hard for me not to look at and ponder over.
Before, his hair used to be long and messy, falling over his forehead in disarray. A surfer’s hair, only dark. But now it’s short. Much shorter, cut so close to the scalp on the sides and thick and spiky up top.
It makes me realize how naive I was, how innocent to think that he looked like a criminal before.
He didn’t.
He looks like it now.
He looks dangerous now with his hair buzzed short, with his slightly crooked nose and hollow cheekbones. All hardened and rough.
Dipping his scruffy jaw, he rasps, “But I hope it was a gift.”
“What?”
“A little too,” he searches for a word, “classy and expensive for a servant girl such as yourself to afford.”
My heart clenches in pain.
It always comes down to this, doesn’t it?
That I have no money. That I’m poor. My family is poor.
I’m beneath him.
I’m beneath Lucas. I’m practically beneath everyone.
“I’m not your servant girl.”
“You wore it for him,” he says, ignoring me, “didn’t you?”
“Don’t talk about him,” I warn.
His eyes swipe across my features. “Because you came here for him.”
My heart skips a beat at his right conclusion. “I came here with my friends, okay?”
“I’d believe you, you know.” He dips down even further as his mouth pulls up on the side in his signature smirk. “If you didn’t reek of a little thing called desperation.”
I flinch. “Get away from me right now.”
“All dressed up and pretty,” he rasps, ignoring my command. “But as I said, I hope it was a gift. Because I’d hate to see you waste money that you don’t have. For something you’ll never get.”
“And what is that?”
“Him.”
It shouldn’t have stung the way it does. I knew what he was going to say.
But hearing it and expecting to hear it are two different things.
And even though he got my intentions for tonight wrong — I’m not here to get him back — he knew where to hit me to exact maximum pain for me and pleasure for himself.
“And you’d make sure of that this time, wouldn’t you?” I say bitterly.
“Make sure of what?”
“That I don’t get him. Because you never liked me with him anyway.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Pain stabs my chest. “So what, do you pop champagne every night now? In celebration.”
“And snort a couple of lines of cocaine on Sunday, just for good measure.”
“That I’ve disappeared from your best friend’s life.”
I expect him to answer. To make a quip. Rub it in my face, make it hurt more. But he goes silent for a few seconds, his reddish brown and glinting-a-second-ago eyes shut down. Then, murmuring, “Best friend.”
“Yes.”
One more sweep of his gaze over my face before he goes back to being his usual arrogant self. And I’m left wondering what that was.
That momentary flicker on his features.
But as always, he makes me realize that I have other things to worry about when he says, “Sure, yeah. Life’s pretty fun.”
“I —”
“Although,” he continues over me, “not as much fun as it was watching you out there. Pretending to be all aloof and unaffected, pretending that you don’t care, that you don’t notice. When we both know that you do. You did.”
“I know about his dad,” I blurt out.
“What?”
“I know he’s dying, okay?”
His face screws up in disgust. “His dad’s a fucking piece of shit.”
Well, yeah. I can’t argue with him there.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt Lucas.
“Even so. Lucas must be having a tough time of it. He always cared about his dad.” And then, because I can’t resist, I add, “Not that you’re capable of understanding that.”
Because he’s a shitty son, isn’t he?
While Lucas has an excuse to be a shitty son — but he isn’t — Reign actually is. And he doesn’t even have an excuse. His parents have always been good to him. They’ve always tried to help him, reach out to him so he could reform his ways. But he’s always been a disappointment to them.
He’s always been a rebel and a troublemaker.
Freaking Bandit.
But if my dig made a dent on his cockiness, I can’t see it.
Because he’s as casual as ever. “Your point being?”
“My point being that maybe you should stop thinking about how much you hate me for once and start thinking about Lucas. Because maybe I’m here tonight to be there for him. As friends. He’s going to need all the support that he can get and I’m here to give it to him.”