Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Not once did the man turn his head to act as if the business, or his child who worked inside, existed.
“Don’t turn my valid concern for a situation that’s been happening since we were barely eighteen around on me because it still makes you uncomfortable,” Gracen said. She needed to get that fact in before Delaney’s already sky-high walls of defense shot impossibly higher. “We both know I was a bitch in high school until you came around to knock me down.”
Delaney didn’t relax at Gracen’s piss poor excuse for a joke, but she lost the extra attitude in her expression. Something was something, after all. Better than nothing. Gracen couldn’t work with nothing.
“You’re right about one thing. It’s not about Alora. I know that,” Delaney said, sighing. Flipping the invitation around for a better view at the names on the front where Gracen had ripped open the envelope, another gusty breath left her friend. “I should have told you about her and ... him. Apparently, they got together last summer. I told Bexley you wouldn’t care when she mentioned it to me because she gave me the impression it wasn’t anything serious, so I didn’t bother to mention it.”
Wow.
“They waited a whole year, huh?”
Delaney only shrugged like she didn’t have much to say on the topic. Frankly, what could she? Gracen’s statement spoke for itself, and so did her history. A history her friend knew all too well.
“Did you ever think that maybe you and Sonny just weren’t meant to work out, and someday you might see it like that instead of the way you do?” Delaney eventually asked. “You know it’ll hurt less, too, right?”
Ouch.
Right to the point.
The name shot through Gracen’s brain like a close-range shot from a high calibre bullet. A second of immeasurable pain followed by total numbness that every cell in her body tried to fight off what it no longer wanted to acknowledge. She barely let the name pass her own lips, never mind her thoughts, because unlike Delaney, Gracen couldn’t say it without the consequences that always followed.
Despite the way it felt like her body was splitting in two—one side internally screaming as she tried to convince herself to escape from this conversation—Gracen didn’t show the discomfort or pain on the outside. Well, not much.
The fold of her arms across her sweaty sports bra hid the way her heart thumped so loudly in her chest that it ached with every beat. Wasn’t heartbreak supposed to get better with time? Wasn’t that the lie?
It’d been two years.
Two goddamn years.
How many more times did she need to tell herself to get over it?
“I just don’t understand how he can—”
“Tell you he loved you from the time you were fourteen and break up with you on your twenty-first birthday,” Delaney said dryly as she rubbed her fingers over her closed eyes as if she’d found pressure there. “Me, either.”
He’d been sixteen.
That time felt like a different world to Gracen.
“You don’t have to make a joke out of it.”
At that statement, Delaney’s hazel eyes popped open to meet Gracen’s. All the defensiveness from earlier bled away as the shorter woman shrugged in her running attire made up of an oversized hoodie, stretch leggings, and runners. Every item of clothing, like all the rest of the wardrobe that made up Delaney’s closet, were black.
Something else to set off the sweetness.
Or so her friend said.
“I wasn’t making a—” Delaney pressed her lips together, then let out a nervous breath of air chased by a weak laugh. “I know what happened with you and Sonny wasn’t that simple. It was more than how he left you.”
“Putting it mildly.”
“But,” her friend added quickly, “it did happen, Gracen. Two years ago, actually.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The look Delaney offered back in response said more than any words ever could. Gracen didn’t hide her bitterness as well as she thought she did when she tried. At least her friend had enough sense not to rub more salt in the raw wound that was Gracen’s bleeding, broken heart on her proverbial sleeve.
“It’s basically done, okay?” Delaney said, shrugging one shoulder. “History. Let it stay there. Look at you—you look great, still don’t have any kids, own your own business, and at least half of the population of this town idolizes the ground you walk on.”
Gracen rolled her eyes. “Teenagers don’t count.”
Even if she loved how the group could keep their schedules at Haus of Hair booked solid six days a week.
“My point is,” Delaney replied with another roll of her annoyed eyes, “is that on every level, you’ve done better. Upgraded. Don’t prove that different by feeling some type of way just because he’s getting married now.”
Right. Succeeded, she had. Even as her ex-fiancé seemed to do the same from afar while he finished his business degrees at a university in the city. Sure, Gracen wanted to say to appease her friend and possibly end the conversation now that it had gone beyond where she was comfortable.