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"What the fuck?!" She gasped, dropping the spatula onto the pan. She brought a hand to her chest as she whipped around, holding the shirt tightly closed in her hands even though she already had it buttoned.
The boy in front of her didn't seem to know what to do as they studied each other in shocked silence.
He was dressed in a graphic t-shirt and jeans that looked slightly loose for his thin frame. Once she had a minute, she focused more on his face. He was a brunette and black-rimmed glasses sat on his nose that framed light eyes. He looked familiar, though.
"Look away!" she yelled.
The young man from last night threw his hands up almost like it was instinct. "I didn't see anything!"
Her words must have knocked him out of his stupor as he started to apologize.
"I didn't mean to scare you. Just...who are you?" he questioned, attempting to avert his eyes from her barely dressed body. However, the light blush on his cheeks told Mykie that he'd seen enough of her to have a reason to remember her later.
She looked down before blushing herself. In her fear, she grabbed her shirt and it rode up, revealing the underwear she was wearing. It also didn't help that the shirt was white, and she was wearing a black bra, making the shirt virtually useless except for pretending to be modest.
"Renly brought me..." she trailed off, unsure how to finish her sentence. Why did he bring her here instead of taking her home?
His eyes lit up in recognition. "Oh! You're the Cantil Girl!"
Her heart lept to her throat. What did he know about her? “Excuse me?”
His eyes widened further as he lifted a hand to the back of his neck sheepishly. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that an insult? I know a job’s a job, but I thought since Renly said you were a dancer and bar person at Pearl’s, that you weren’t really shy about working around the Cantil.”
She tried not to breathe a too obvious sigh of relief. He thought that she was offended because he insinuated that she was some slut. “Cantil Girl” could be considered synonymous with the word “prostitute” for some.
Forcing herself to laugh, she said, “Right. I just work for the Cantil. They pay pretty good money. When I show up on time, at least.”
He then suddenly frowned. "You didn't look too good last night."
Mykie crossed her arms self-consciously, hugging her waist. "What do you mean?"
His expression changed and he looked apologetic as he dropped his hand from his neck. "Sorry, I’m being insensitive, aren’t I? You weren't doing great on the car ride back. He barely got you out of the car before you puked."
She crinkled her nose in disgust. She puked last night?
She turned around and dealt with the bacon as she continued to put the pieces together.
"He drove me here, right?" she asked.
“I drove you guys home. I’m the kid you vouched for last night, remember?”
She looked him over again. No, the boy last night had curly-black hair and he didn’t wear glasses.
“I temporarily dyed my hair last night and Blaine curled it, so I’d look a little older. Didn’t work, did it?” he said with a shrug as an answer to her look.
She pursed her lips and turned back to the bacon. “Why did you bring me here?”
"You were pretty out of it. Ren said you guys talked more at Pearl's and that you were a Cantil Girl but nothing else. He wanted to make sure you could sleep off the alcohol somewhere safe, especially since you wouldn’t tell him where you lived. He offered to leave you alone and let you sleep in his room, but you started crying about being alone," the boy explained. He sounded like he came closer to talk over the sound of the bacon, but Mykie was mortified and refused to look at him.
She cried? How pathetic was that? She had been alone for quite a while, focusing on the Cantil and graduating college online instead of long relationships. It was what her birth father and Chance did, and they had no problems. Sure, sometimes she got a little emotional about it, especially when Jezebeth brought men she was dating home, but to cry about it? That was out of character for her.
"So..." Mykie trailed off, trying to think of a way to deflect the conversation away from herself. "You live with Renly?"
"Mhmm. For a little while now, yeah,’ he said before shaking his head. "Sorry, I didn't actually introduce myself, did I? I'm Duke Loughrey."
"Duke?" she repeated, pushing around a slice of bacon. "I thought I heard your name last night was ‘Cor’."
He was quiet for a moment and Mykie almost thought she said something wrong, but he spoke before she could ask.
