“This isfun,” Cole corrects. "Let me make my own stupid decisions that don't involve drinking."
Wade looks at me. “I’m taking your side, for the record.”
“Thank you,” I mutter.
“For a thousand,” he adds, setting down ten green slips of paper in the center of the table.
“I hate all of you.”
Cole grins far too widely as he counts his bet out in fifties. “Perfect. We’ve got a split table.”
Jackson drops his cash on top of Wade's. “You and Wade say nothing happens. Cole and I say you’re folding by checkout.”
“That’s insulting,” I mutter.
“To who?” Jackson asks.
I glare at him.
Cole’s smile turns positively vicious. “If you feel so strongly about it, join the bet.”
I should refuse on principle. I know that. But I've never been good at backing down from a challenge.
I slip my wallet out of my jacket pocket and put down ten hundred-dollar bills.“This is so fucking stupid. Nothing is happening,” I say.
The second Cole declares that he'll hold onto the four grand and gathers it all up, I hear voices at the entrance to the bar.
Mandy, loud and laughing. Dana answering her. A third voice, quieter, familiar enough that every muscle in my body seems to clock it at once.
I turn to look and nearly choke on the sip of whiskey I was trying to down.Carly's beside them, shrugging out of her coat.
Jesus Christ.
She’s wearing a little black dress.
I recognize it. It's one of the tennis ones she designed last year that actually went to production. Sleeves cling all the way down her arms, the thumb loops rolled back to give the appearance that it isn't actually athletic wear. The neckline scoops low, showing off both her collarbonesandher cleavage, the fabric clinging from the waist up before flaring just a little over her hips and upper thighs. It cuts off just below her rear, and dear god, those fucking stockings are going to be the death of me— sheer and so damn sexy with her boots that I nearly bite my knuckles like some kind of animal.
My brain, unhelpfully, offers me a full spread of images of what she would look like with that dress half peeled from her body.
Dana looks polished and beautiful in a dark green dress, Mandy in light blue. But Carly is the one who hits me square in the chest. Her hair is half tied up, half down, and I immediately decide that's my favorite way for her to wear her hair.
Cole leans in without taking his eyes off her. “We should raise the bet.”
I don’t look at him. “Shut the fuck up, Pearson,” I say under my breath.
But it comes out rough.
Too rough.
Chapter 22
Carly
Eight Weeks
I am absolutely not lettinghim ruin this for me.
That becomes my private mission statement approximately thirty seconds after Grayson and I stop arguing and go dead silent in our very stupid, very luxurious, one-bed prison cell.
