Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Court took it back from me and finished it. “Going to see if we can make the best sex of your life happen again.”
Without preamble, he lifted me into the air and carried me into his bedroom.
Neither of us slept a wink that night.
16
Court
I yawned and stretched on my bed, blinking sleep out of my eyes. English and I had finally crashed around four or maybe five in the morning. I swatted my hand at my phone and saw that it was already noon. We’d slept straight through the morning.
My eyes drifted over to where she lay, curled up in my sheets. Her blonde hair fanned out across the pillow. Her still-naked frame covered only by the thin sheet, but I could just make out the curves of her breasts, hips, and ass. She had one hand extended toward me as if we’d fallen asleep, reaching for each other.
Selfishly, I wanted to wake her up with my head buried between her legs and start all over again. But I knew she was sore and needed the sleep. She’d feel me every time she moved for the next day or two at least. A smile touched my features at that thought.
Another yawn hit me. I probably should just pull her against me and try to get another hour or two of rest, but once I was awake, I was awake. So, I kicked off the covers, yanked on boxers and shorts, swiped my phone off the nightstand, and headed into the kitchen.
As I brewed a pot of coffee, I went through my messages. There was one from Robert, thanking me for coming to the party. Two from Poppy, insisting we meet up later. One from Camden that made me frown.
Heard you went to Dawson’s party last night with English?
Great. So, the news was already circulating. Of course, I could lie. At least to everyone else, I could lie like a champ. She was my publicist. She was there to keep me in line. All that bullshit.
But to Camden?
Yeah, the lie would never stand. He’d probably already guessed what I hadn’t said.
I decided not to text him back. I’d rather talk to him in person. Plus, he was in the Hamptons all weekend with Katherine. And if Penn was back, then the tension must be high between them. Katherine and Penn had had an on-again, off-again thing for years. I still didn’t understand why Camden had married her. Insisted on an arranged marriage at that. But I knew that my little brother’s presence around his wife made him want to blow a gasket. Even if Penn had just come home, married to Natalie. It made me almost glad not to be there to witness that malfunction.
The last message was from my mother.
Congratulations, Court! This is just what I’ve always wanted for you!
I clicked on the attachment with dread knotting my stomach. My mother and I had never seen eye to eye on what the other wanted. She’d had dreams for us, and who we were as people had never mattered much around those dreams.
The image displayed, and it was a screenshot of Kensington Corporation stocks. They’d skyrocketed overnight. I froze in surprise. This wasn’t what I’d been anticipating. Me joining the company had made the stocks climb? It seemed… unbelievable. But it must have shown investors that the company was headed in the right direction. That it was more certain of the future.
And for a second, I wondered if that was true. Could I be the future of Kensington Corporation? Sure, it had all been bullshit. English had engineered it. But… this said something else. Not just that it had worked. But that others believed in me. I couldn’t remember ever feeling that before.
I typed out a quick response to my mother, still shaking out that feeling. Then, I poured a mug of coffee and brought it back into the bedroom where English was still fast asleep. I set it down to cool and then pulled out the book I’d started yesterday—Station Eleven. It was a postapocalyptic novel centered around a traveling Shakespearean theater. Murder, the world ending, and Shakespeare. Really different and engrossing.
I fell back into the book like through a rabbit hole. Time disappeared when I was reading. As if I’d entered my fantastical world and lived out my time as the main character. Books had a certain kind of magic. An escape like no other.
Incessant buzzing coming from the other side of the room jolted me out of it. After the third long ring, I finally put the book down next to This Is How You Lose the Time War—a fantastic time travel novel I’d read last week—and went in search of English’s phone.
It was tucked inside her small black purse, and I pulled it out to silence it. The screen lit up one more time.