Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 125121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
What if he did see me and Adonis in the classroom? What would be going through his head right now?
I didn’t mean to strum myself off with my professor between class breaks. Adonis was looking at me like I was both the biggest mistake of his life and its greatest gift. A look like that was made to drive you crazy with its contradiction.
Leaning back, I rested my head on the window—watching mansions whip by. Cherry blossom trees lined the pavement, sharing their soft, beautiful petals with the rest of the world like little treats meant to brighten our day.
I thought back to the first day I met Victor. My stepfather had finally told me the conditions for him to pay my tuition. That morning, I stood in the entrance to their bedroom while he told Mom he was taking me to a marriage interview, and did she want to join us? She stared at a spot on the wall and didn’t acknowledge that she heard a word he said.
I wish I could say I felt some kind of outrage. The guy shipped me off to boarding school. Now he was marrying me off to a complete stranger in exchange for paying for my education. It was like stepping back into an eighteenth-century nightmare. I should’ve been mad then. I should be mad now. But I lived in a nightmare waking and sleeping. What difference did a brooding fiancé make?
That’s what I thought. Then, I met him... and discovered he was a complete asshole.
I chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was thinking of the first day we met. It’s weird that I’ve never really minded being engaged. I just hated being engaged to you.”
A ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “Well, shit. It was love at first sight for me.”
“Were you really into my Coke-stained sweatpants and overall sucking void of misery? I heard that’s a turn-on.”
“Like you wouldn’t believe. I nearly married you on the spot.”
We cracked up, though it ended quickly. He returned to his silence.
Victor drove farther and farther out of town. I didn’t get a hint of where we were going until he turned left down a familiar road.
I cringed. This place did not hold good memories for me. “What are we doing here?”
“Don’t get impatient now.” Victor pulled into a parking spot in front of the marina. “You’re thirty feet away from finding out.”
“Yeah, but you’re giving off a weird vibe right now,” I said, eyeing him. “If you’ve brought me here to kill me, you’d better say, because I have the right to fight for my life.”
He snorted. “I’m definitely not putting out the right vibe if you’re getting serial killer. Just get out of the car, weirdo. You’re ruining the surprise.”
Victor came around and helped me out. I turned my head to the sun, eyes fluttering shut as I breathed in the salty sea breeze. Regalia Marina was a watery maze of sun-bleached mega yachts. On a good day, vendors came from all around town, parking their food trunks, setting up tarot readings, drizzling out caramel popcorn and other sweet treats to cute couples walking by.
On that day, the marina was a quiet place for just us. Waves lapped beneath the wooden slats of the dock, chiming a soft, steady rhythm that brought back memories.
The seas were calm that night too. The perfect opportunity for me to showcase my one lesson and take my stepfather’s yacht out for a spin. Especially because Richard Cooperson, son of Roger Cooperson—the man who used to employ my mother as a housekeeper—kept running his mouth about the help, and how I wasn’t fit to lick the decks of my stepfather’s yacht, let alone step foot on it.
I shot back that he was mad that fortune changed for my mother, but not even divine intervention would cure him of being a dick. Then somehow the two of us and his smirking friends ended up on the boat, and I ended up spending the night in a police station. The cops wouldn’t tell me who made the late-night anonymous call reporting a theft from the marina, but I wasn’t really asking. Like I said, Richard Cooperson was a fucking dick.
“Do you remember a Richard Cooperson?” I asked. I accepted Victor’s hand, letting him lead me to the farthest section of the marina, and the biggest boat. “Did you go to school with him?”
“Yeah, I remember your half brother. He was kind of a dick.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know who my father is, but he’s definitely not a Cooperson. Mom was clear about that. The dick doesn’t fall far from the scrotum. Roger Cooperson wasn’t a nice man either. Mom would never be with a guy who disrespected her.”
He turned a beaming grin on me. “Please tell me at least some things on that truth list were real.”