Page 34 of Well Aware

They’d been inseparable from a very early age. Thick as thieves. You never saw one without seeing the other.

Hell, she’d been at our house so often back before the accident that she might as well have lived there.

Charleigh had also been in the car that day with Sonja and Seraphina.

In the aftermath of the wreck, Charleigh had been seriously injured. So injured, in fact, that we thought we were going to lose her, too.

In hopes of circumventing her parents from suing their pants off, Mom and Dad had decided to gift Charleigh Sonja’s percentage in the companies.

Her parents had accepted on her behalf, of course. It may not have brought her best friend back, or made up for her accident, but it was something. And her parents knew that.

“She owns ten percent of two professional franchises and still dresses and acts like that?”

Court’s lips tipping up were slow and hilarious.

One day, Charleigh and him were going to figure it out. And when that day came, they’d be inseparable.

What better way to get them close than to get them in the same business?

Speaking of Charleigh…

“What am I doing here, loser?”

I twisted on my barstool to find Charleigh behind me.

“Hey there, pumpkin.” I smiled and held out my hands.

She walked into my arms, burying her face into my neck.

She trembled for just a few short seconds then stopped.

A short time of vulnerability was all she would allow herself.

She pulled away from my hug, and I saw over her short head the way Court was absolutely murdering me with his eyes.

My lips twitched as Charleigh stepped away, but not toward Court. Away from him, putting me in between the two of them.

“I have need of you,” I admitted.

“For what?”

I sighed. “Seraphina’s at it again.”

Her scowl was dark. “What the hell did she do this time?”

I told her everything, not leaving out a single thing.

Usually she would know everything that was going on in my life in real time, but she’d been acting a little off lately. Like she was upset with something going on with her life, preoccupied even. She tried to meet up with Lysander and me a couple of times a month, but that’d slacked off right around the time she’d taken her new job at the dog food factory in town.

I had a feeling it had to do with her new boss, but chose not to push her on it.

When she was ready, she’d open up about it.

“I’m down,” Charleigh declared immediately. “Anything that’ll piss off Seraphina is an automatic yes in my book.” She looked between the two of us. “What do you need me to do? Sell my shares to him?”

Court looked at her calculatingly.

“How much does Seraphina hate you?”