Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 105183 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 351(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105183 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 351(@300wpm)
“What?”
“I have work to do,” he says. “And you’re going to help me.”
“But it’s the weekend.”
“Don’t tell me you abstain from the pull of an email or two during a Saturday or Sunday.”
More than an email or two. “What am I helping you with?”
He kisses my cheek and snaps the lid of his laptop down before sliding it off the counter. “Meet me in the Library Bar in half an hour.” He heads towards the door. “Your purse and phone are on the island.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have a few calls to make.”
“Oh.” I fetch my phone, bracing myself for the barrage of missed calls and messages. I’m not wrong. “Shit.” I call Abbie first, and the moment she answers, I get a request to switch to FaceTime. Fuck it. I cringe and accept, lowering to a stool.
Abbie takes me in, the sheet, my hair, probably my swollen lips, then looks past me. “You fucking idiot,” she breathes.
“You’d call me something harsher if you saw me last night.”
“Wait. I’m getting Charley on the call. You will face both of us.”
I sink farther onto the stool, making myself small, as Charley joins, Ena on her hip. She scans me, the background. “You fucking idiot,” she breathes.
“She is,” Abbie grunts. “What happened?”
“He showed up at the club.” I still don’t know who told him I was there. Does it matter? “It was . . . heated.”
“And what’s his excuse for being a deceitful fucktart?”
“He has no excuse. He has an arrangement with Katherine, and her husband knows.”
“I don’t get it,” Charley breathes.
“Me either,” I admit. “But it’s over and—”
“You’re under.” Abbie raises her brows. “Amelia!”
“I can’t help it,” I cry. “I look at him and disintegrate. I get this funny feeling inside of me, and it feels so good. He touches me, I melt. He talks, I shiver. I smell him and could faint.”
“Jesus.” Charley passes Ena to Lloyd and gets closer to the camera. Yes. This is serious.
“So what now?” Abbie asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit, getting up and following my feet to the dressing room. I open the end door and swallow when I see the green mules. “He’s said he’s only interested in me.” Closing the door, I go into the bathroom.
“And you believe him?”
Are they right? Am I being a complete, foolish dickhead? Again. But then, it’s easy for them to draw unattractive conclusions. They’re not the ones feeling what I’m feeling. “I believe him.” If they’d seen the way he looked at me last night, they would too. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you guys.” I flip on the shower. “But I do know that I can’t walk away, so here I am waiting to find out where this goes.”
“Marriage?” Charley asks.
“What? No!”
“Babies?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“So this is purely sex, is it?”
“What’s your point?” My irritation is real. Because I know what her fucking point is.
“My point is that you just walked out on Nick after five years because he wanted to get very serious, and all I’m hearing right now are clues that you might think this thing you’ve got going on with Jude Fuckboy Harrison could be very serious.”
“And you don’t want serious,” Abbie chimes in, shoving a marshmallow in her mouth and smiling sarcastically around the giant lump of pure sugar.
I stare at my best friends, at a loss. “What’s the plan for tonight?”
Both of their heads drop back, and both of them groan their exasperation.
“Look, let me figure this out as I go along,” I say, dumping the sheet in the wicker wash basket. “Why do I even have to put a name on it?”
“Because I feel like both parties in a situationship like this should know what each other’s expectations are.” Charley, ever the sensible one, starts bobbing on the screen, walking somewhere in her house. “I’ve got to go. We have a poonami happening. Meet here at six?”
“Six,” I confirm, giving my attention to Abbie when Charley leaves the call. “I’ll be back soon. We can get ready together.”
“Be careful, Amelia.”
“You’ve changed your tune,” I say, laughing.
“Yes, well, now I have opinion-changing information. Don’t be a mug, okay?”
I smile before I hang up, lowering to the edge of the tub, spinning my mobile in my hand. Trying not to overthink. What are my expectations? What are Jude’s? And after last night, the tension, the anger, the yelling, shouldn’t we have discussed that?
Or did we?
I groan, dragging myself up from the side of the tub, wincing when my phone starts ringing. Nick. “Oh God,” I whisper, flipping the shower on to drown out the sound of my ex trying to call me again.
Chapter 27
The lobby is buzzing with weekend guests arriving as I pass through, luggage and golf bags being carried in by the staff, and glasses of welcome drinks being handed out. I dip and weave my way to the Library Bar, halting on the threshold when I see him at the end of the bar on his mobile. The exact spot Jude Harrison was in the first time I laid eyes on him. He’s slightly to the left of the smoky-blue, ribbed glass shade, giving me clear sight to him. And I’m as shook as I was on that day, my stomach fluttering.