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I should’ve capitalized on that hurt. Should’ve furthered it with a barbed comment. Pushed her away.
But I didn’t.
Couldn’t.
“I’m sorry, Jessica,” I apologized, something I was unused to doing. “Truly, I am. I should’ve called you.”
She pouted. “Yes, you should’ve.”
I bit my lip. She wasn’t going to let me off easy. Jessica came off to the rest of the world as beautiful, dramatic and unapologetically herself, but she was sensitive and quick to be wounded. She felt everything very deeply and didn’t let people in easily. Not after she had been hurt, ruined by Eli’s father. Her trust was hard-earned and precious.
“I don’t have many friends,” I said suddenly. “I’m very alienating and severe.” I took one last swallow of my drink. “And as you know, I’m not very good at the whole girlfriend thing. I wasn’t very good at the whole fiancée thing either. Until Cristian.” I paused, thinking of the man in question, my body responding to the mere memory of him.
I wondered what he was doing right at this moment. Brooding in his office? No, he would not let me ruin his plans. But he would punish me when I got home.
And I looked forward to it.
“Cristian?” Jessica repeated, her eyes glowing with interest. “That’s his name?”
I nodded once.
“I have about a million questions as to how all of this came about, what kind of man Cristian is to change my best friend so quickly and so drastically.”
I forced a smile. “You know that I’m not exactly versed at sharing ... girl talk.” I swirled what little remained in my glass before swallowing the last of my drink, hoping that I sounded convincing.
Cristian had fully and irrevocably changed me. Just not in the ways that Jessica thought. He’d taught me I liked to be hurt. That seeing my dead fiancé excited me. That I liked it when his possibly psychotic second-in-command watched as we fucked. That I loved being engaged to someone who was so feared and respected.
She frowned at me. For a long moment, it seemed she wasn’t going to let it go, and I would be forced to push her away instead of conjuring some lie. “Okay,” she sighed, and I relaxed ever so slightly. “When’s the wedding then?” she asked, nowhere near ready to give up. Her mouth turned up. “Five years from now?”
“No.” I signaled the waitress for another drink. “Not quite. I’m not sure of the exact date yet, but it’s looking to be only a matter of months.”
Jessica’s eyes flared. “Months?” she repeated, sounding slightly shrill. “Months?” she said again. “You’re one extreme to the other. Months isn’t enough time. Not for a dress ... it has to be custom, of course.” Her eyes flickered to the diamond on my left hand. “And it seems your fiancé has more than enough money to finance that. But all the money in the world cannot rush perfection, and you need a perfect dress. Not to mention location, caterer, flowers. And oh my god, I need the perfect date. I mean—”
“I’ve got an idea for the perfect date,” I interrupted, knowing that if I didn’t stop Jessica, she’d just keep going on and on and eventually find out I had absolutely no control over any of the details of the wedding, the wedding itself and certainly not the groom.
The groom who happened to be a mob boss.
Yes, better to get her off the subject of the wedding altogether. To protect both her and myself, it was time to share something with her. Something that wasn’t mine to share. That would ruin friendships. That would shatter the dynamic I had with the only two people in the world I actually liked.
“Your eligible and mysterious groom has a devastatingly handsome brother?” she asked hopefully.
Bile crept up my throat at the mere thought of Jessica having any kind of contact with anyone in Cristian’s world.
My world now.
“No,” I said quickly. “But the man in question is devastatingly handsome and definitely eligible.”
Jessica’s eyebrow raised in interest. “Tell me more about him.”
“You already know everything there is to know about him,” I said. “Well, except that he’s madly in love with you.”
Jessica put down her drink, elbows on the table, leaning forward. “Now you’ve got my interest.”
“Aiden,” I said. “Aiden has been madly in love with you ... well, maybe not from the exact moment he laid eyes on you since you vomited on his floor not long after that, but for a very long time.”
Jessica blinked rapidly at me, stunned silent for an entire minute. I was vaguely concerned I’d caused her to have some kind of stroke.
“Oh my god, I’m her!” she screeched finally.
I swallowed my smile of satisfaction that I’d deflected the attention away from me, from Cristian. “Who?”
Her eyes narrowed at me. “The woman. In almost every romantic comedy. The one who has been looking for love, for something, dating purely assholes while oblivious to the one nice, wonderful, sexy man right in front of her.”
