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“What the fuck?” he repeated, shaking his head in bewilderment of what was going on.
“I know this is a lot to take in.”
“No,” he chimed in. “You and Adrian are a lot to take in. This…” He gestured all around him. “Is what the fuck?”
“I’m sorry you had to find out this way. If I thought you would have cared, I would have called you the minute this started happening.”
“How could you think I wouldn’t? You were family, Paige. I would have been here in a second.”
“Then why didn’t you reach out to me? Like after?”
He rubbed his temples, inhaling a deep breath. “Can we just take an intermission? A break on talking about us?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“So what about Adrian?”
I was confused. “You want to talk about that?”
“Even less. I’m talking about could it be tied to him? He fucks women over like it’s his hobby.”
I grimaced. It was true, but still hard to hear.
“Could it be someone after him, coming for you instead?”
“Adrian has only been in my life for the last two months.”
He took in what I was saying before asking, “Then what’s the plan?”
Adrian
I sat at the bar, craving a bourbon, but I had to stay focused. In a matter of a few hours, our lives were once again turned upside down. Now we were adding Cade into the mix, and I hadn’t contemplated the consequences this would bring other than saving Paige’s life.
The past was right there with us.
Where we went from here was still up in the air. For a man who thrived on control this was eating me alive. I had to stay strong, shoving away the emotions of us being together again. The last time we were, it was catastrophic.
They say the truth will set you free, but all it did was bring us demons we carried for a decade.
I may have been sitting there.
However, my mind was stuck in the past.
I sat remembering her sixteenth birthday with nostalgia and contempt.
I grabbed the dress at the boutique shop where I suggested Cade find Paige’s present for her sixteenth birthday. I played it off like I only knew this shop because of some chick who dragged me there. Which was partially the truth. We were randomly walking down this street, coming out of a bar and she just hauled me in there.
The white dress on the mannequin instantly caught my attention, picturing Paige in it.
For the last month, I overheard her talking to Cade about how excited she was to finally be turning sixteen. She felt like this was the year she was going to find true love. Little did she know, I was never going to let that happen.
To hear her talking about this day as if it was the beginning of turning into a woman wasn’t something I expected. I still remembered her as the neighbor girl with pigtails and a sweet smile.
“Here.” I handed the dress to Caleb. “Get her this one.”
He gazed down at it, smirking. “Since when are you a stylist?”
I was only three years older than them, and we were in much different places in our lives. I just started college and they were sophomores in high school. I was living in an apartment, running into them on the weekends. Still up each other’s asses.
