Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
This was worth fighting for.
****
Hailey took a sip of her coffee with a mocha-peppermint creamer, and it was delicious. She loved ordinary, regular coffee, but at Halloween and Christmas, she loved to treat herself with whatever creamer was available. She liked to try new things. This was one of her favorites. Tomorrow, it was going to be the sugar-cookie creamer.
Stepping back from reorganizing the Christmas stand, she loved how it popped. She put her shop-bought coffee down and took a quick snap for her website. Business was good.
Her family still refused to acknowledge her, and there was a time she would have been upset by that. Even Harlow had told her if her parents weren’t happy with her success, that was on them, and they could fuck off.
She adored Harlow. Her friend had a way of telling her exactly what was on her mind. There was no filter.
Hailey scanned through the photos she had taken and selected the ones she loved the most. It didn’t take long to get them loaded on the website. The products were already loaded up.
It was getting late, a little after eight. The shop had closed a couple of hours ago. She had already sent Harlow home. The other woman was getting dangerously close to giving birth.
Larissa herself didn’t want to go home. Although home was a nice place, and she loved it, it was still incredibly lonely there. Working helped and stopped her from thinking.
They had several orders that had been made in the last few hours, and rather than go home, she started to package them up. She signed some coupons she added into the packages, and sealed them up, printing out the label. Once that was done, she had them placed in the right bags for the postman tomorrow. Christmas was coming fast.
As she was about to grab her jacket to leave, there was a knock at the door, and she frowned. No one knocked on her door after hours. No one knocked on any of her doors, period, but she was used to that. It didn’t matter how nice she was to people, she was kind of just forgotten. Unless it was Harlow. Harlow remembered her.
Going to the door, she opened it, and just stared at Kinky. She noticed he stuck around a lot, mainly outside the shop, watching it. She figured that was his job, what Smokey and the club had told him to do, seeing as Harlow worked for her.
The beauty parlor had been attacked, which had resulted in her getting shot and nearly dying. When she woke up, she had been tempted to leave, to close up shop and move away. Going back to her parents was not an option. They would just consider her even more of a failure and tell her she had given up.
The only thing she could do was open back up and hope nothing like that happened again.
“Can I come in?” Kinky asked.
They didn’t talk. Most of the time, she didn’t even look at him.
He’d lied to her from the very first day. From the very first meeting. Their secret romance had been because he didn’t want anyone to know. She was nothing more than a job, because he and the club thought she was some kind of secret spy working for an enemy MC. She didn’t even know what this enemy MC looked like. She had no idea what MC it was, or what they wanted.
“No,” Hailey said.
“Look, I know you’re angry—”
“I’m not angry.” She frowned at him.
“Now you’re lying.”
“Was I angry? Hell, yeah, I was angry, and I was upset, but now I don’t care. You did what you did, and now I’m doing what I have to do. I don’t need to talk to you. I don’t need to prove anything to you. We’re done, Kinky. We don’t need to talk to each other, at all.”
And she stepped out of the shop, locking the door.
“Look, I know I fucked up.”
“No, you did your job.”
“Damn it, Hailey. Listen to me.”
“Listen to you?” She growled. “Why should I listen to you? You lied to me. I told you to be real with me, and you lied to me. You could have just asked, or kept it as fake dates, to learn more about me, but not you. You made me think there was something real. Something good. My parents had always said I was a fool, and you proved them right. I don’t have to listen to you. I don’t have to do anything for you.”
This didn’t feel good. He had broken her heart. He’d destroyed her trust, and the truth was, every single day was so damn hard, to get out of bed and keep going. She kept doing it, but the truth was, why? She was so damn lonely. Wrapping her arms around herself, she walked away. It was all she could do. He had made her a fool, and she was never going to forgive him.