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“Good.” His father moved and Hale looked to him to see him lifting his glass Hale’s way. “You want a whisky?”
Hale’s heart skipped a beat.
Men drank whisky. Not boys.
“For real?” he asked.
“It might help you sleep,” Corey murmured.
He tried not to sound as excited as he was when he said, “Yeah.”
His dad quirked a smile at him, left him on the balcony and went in to pour Hale his own glass.
He felt important. He felt great. And he didn’t care that when Corey gave him the glass, there was barely more than a couple of sips in it. He also didn’t care that when he took his first sip, he nearly gagged, it tasted so gross.
He stood, holding his glass between his hands, just like his dad, his forearms on the railing, just like his dad’s were, sipping whisky and watching the sea, like two men with a lot on their minds winding down so they could sleep.
It was one of the best moments of his life.
And it always would be.
CHAPTER10
LIPSTICK
Hale
Now…
“Don’t be nervous.”
Ned’s words caught Hale’s attention and he turned from looking out the window of the limousine that was taking them to the event, to his side, where Blake was sitting, looking stunning, and scared as shit.
“Darling, you can’t hibernate for the rest of your life,” Ned Sharp, Blake’s father, who was sitting across from them, went on. “You need to re-enter society, re-enterlife.”
“The last time I wasa thing, it was me going viral acting like an imbecile standing at an altar wearing a wedding gown,” Blake said to her dad.
“You weren’t acting like an imbecile,” Ned retorted sternly. “You were acting like a strong, determined woman who wasn’t going to let an ass of a man jack her around.”
“People all over the globe made fun of that for months, Dad. They still do,” Blake noted.
“Who cares?” Ned asked. “You don’t know these people.”
“Says the man who isn’t the star of a million different memes,” she mumbled.
Hale entered the conversation. “You’re too close to it. Those memes don’t make you look bad.” He smiled at her. “You’re a feminist icon.”
“Who got duped by my fiancé, who had sex withone of my friends days before our weddingand by the way, he’d already had sex withmost of my friends, videotaping it and putting it on a website, for God’s sakes.”
“And how does that reflect on you?” Ned inquired.
Blake bugged her eyes out at him.
Hale took her hand and she turned again to him. “You look stunning. Head up, shoulders straight, because you’re not the butt of a joke, honey. You’re an inspiration for every woman who had her trust broken, showing them the way to take back their power.”
“Dramatically,” Ned put in. “And I’ll add, very expensively.”
That made Blake crack a smile and Hale chuckle, because, as she’d mentioned, Blake had dumped her fiancé at the church on her wedding day, and because she had, Ned still had to pay for the whole thing. And considering Blake was Blake, that didn’t come cheap.
