Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 79328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
I’d never cared about a woman’s past before. Not like this. Never felt the urge to dissect every previous relationship, to measure myself against the men who came before. But with Raina, I wanted to know everything. I needed to understand who this person was that she’d once chosen.
It felt like sizing up the competition. Which was absurd, because she was here with me now. But one question burned hotter than all the others.
“Are you still in contact with him?”
“Just randomly.” She said it casually, like it was nothing. “But he reached out recently to tell me he’s moving back to New York.”
My jaw tightened while something cold and sharp twisted in my chest.
“In fact,” she continued, seemingly oblivious to the storm brewing inside me, “he’s moving into his Manhattan apartment this weekend. He wants to meet up on Sunday.”
“You’re going on a date with him?”
The words came out harsher than I intended, but I couldn’t help it. Raina and I had agreed to see where things between us went, but we’d never explicitly discussed exclusivity. We hadn’t defined what we were. And the thought of her sitting across from some ex-boyfriend, smiling at him the way she smiled at me, letting him remember what it felt like to have her—
It made me want to break something.
Raina’s lips twitched, like she was fighting back a smile. “No, it’s not a date. Just a friendly catch-up. We’re getting coffee at Beans and Brew in the afternoon.”
A friendly catch-up. For her, maybe. I didn’t see any eager anticipation in her eyes, no lingering attachment softening her expression. But what about this Eli dude? Was he viewing their meeting in such platonic terms? Or was this his opportunity to remind her of what they’d had, to try to win her back?
Not if I had anything to say about it. The foreign surge of possessiveness made me think of what I’d witnessed downstairs after dinner.
“What were you and Chuck talking about earlier?” I asked, desperate for something else to focus on before the jealousy consumed me entirely. “Outside the restaurant.”
She stiffened almost imperceptibly. “What?”
“You said he was doing what he does best—trying to undermine things.” I watched her face carefully, searching for any tells. “What did that mean?”
Raina waved a dismissive hand, her gaze drifting to the steam rising from the water. “Oh, you know Chuck. He was just trying to get under my skin. Making comments about how you need me to charm Alexander because you couldn’t do it on your own.” She shrugged, but something about the gesture felt slightly off. “Typical insecure nonsense. I shut him down and walked away. It’s not worth dwelling on.”
Her voice was casual, steady. No obvious signs of deception. But there was a tension in her shoulders that hadn’t been there before, a careful quality to her words that made me wonder if she was telling me everything.
Then again, I knew my tendency toward paranoia. And what she’d described sounded exactly like something Chuck would do. Petty jabs designed to rattle her and to create friction between us. It tracked with everything I knew about him.
“What exactly happened between you and Chuck, anyway?” she asked, shifting to face me more fully. The question felt deliberate, a redirection I couldn’t help but notice. “You never told me the full story.”
“You don’t know?” I asked, surprised she didn’t hear anything from her brother.
She shook her head. “Kurt never really talked about it, and I had a lot going on at the time. My mom was sick…”
Right. Of course. My business failing had felt like the end of the world to me, but Raina had been dealing with something far more important.
“You know we sold athletic wear, right?” She nodded, and a strand of hair slipped free from her bun. I reached over and tucked it behind her ear, any excuse to touch her, to feel the soft warmth of her skin. “We wanted to stand out as a company. Part of that was prioritizing high-quality materials—moisture-wicking, fast-drying, soft against the skin. It was important to us that we met those standards.”
“I remember Kurt mentioning that when you first started.”
“We all agreed to it. But Chuck got greedy.” The old anger stirred in my chest, familiar and bitter. “He was in charge of production and quality while Kurt and I handled marketing and finances. He ended up switching our fabric order to something cheap without us knowing, then put impossible deadlines on our manufacturer and ruined our relationship with a reputable company. We were forced to switch to someone else mid-production.”
“You were okay with that?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Hell no. But Chuck’s a smooth talker and he blamed everything on the manufacturer. By the time we figured out how badly he’d fucked things up, it was too late. Low-quality products had already shipped to stores and customers, and we were still in our infancy. A few bad reviews—including one from a social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers—and that was all it took to bring us down.”