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That intrigued me. “You know I won’t.” And damn, now I was curious what the rumors were.
She dunked her chicken strip in the sauce and didn’t make me ask. “They, meaning most of the women in this town, say she can’t be trusted, especially around men, and she’s just a… bitch. But the Paris I know is kind and shy and sweet. Maybe when she was younger, she was different, but she seems to have changed. It happens.”
Yeah, it did. When you were powerless, you did what you had to do to protect yourself. And without knowing details, my assumption is that Paris hurt them before they could hurt her. It made more sense after the wedding. She ran away because she thought I used her, not knowing the only reason I wanted her to get out of sight was to protect her. Nobody needed to know we just fucked. They didn’t need to think she was easy because that was exactly what would happen. A guy could get laid and he’d get praise, and the woman he slept with would get judged. “No one truly understands what a person has gone through to make them what they are.”
“Exactly.”
“I got an apartment.” I changed the subject because if I showed too much interest, Bristol would do something conniving to get Paris and I together. If she’d give me another chance, I wanted it to be because she wanted to, not because she felt obligated.
“That’s great. Where?”
When I told her the address, she choked on the water she was drinking. “You all right?” I started to get up to pat her back, but she waved me off.
“Fine, fine.” She wiped her mouth and smiled, then leaned in and squeezed my hand. “Great location. I’m sure you’re going to love it there.”
CHAPTER 3
Paris
“Meow.”
I squinted an eye open to see Charlie’s little gray face inches from mine. “Good morning.”
She hit me in the face. “Meow.”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming.” She jumped on the floor when I got out of bed, and I shook a finger at her. “It would really be nice if you’d let me sleep in just once.”
Her tail flicked back and forth as she wound herself between my ankles until I moved to the kitchen. After filling their bowls, I started my coffee machine and drank a glass of water with lemon. I washed my face, got dressed in a baggy T-shirt and a pair of biker shorts, then wrapped my fingers around my coffee mug.
I had very few good memories as a child, but one of them was giving my mom this cup that I drew hearts and flowers on in art class for Mother’s Day. It wasn’t fancy, but she acted like it was made of diamonds and plated in gold, her true loves. Even in her thousand-dollar shoes and custom-made dress, she drank from the cheap ceramic mug every morning until she didn’t.
It was the first time the principal called home because of my behavior. She said I was an embarrassment to the family, and until I could act like a Donovan, she wanted nothing to do with me.
I was ten.
It wasn’t because I was a brat. It was a cry for help that she easily ignored.
Until that point, I kind of thought my mom was a victim of my father, too, but I knew then that she straight up didn’t care about me at all. My dad certainly didn’t. So I stopped caring about them. I stopped caring about anybody and anything. My only focus was survival and doing whatever I could to avoid feeling that kind of pain ever again.
There were several times that I questioned why I dug the cup out of the trash back then and even more times I wanted to smash it to pieces, but I knew I’d regret it. The story I told myself as to why I kept it changed depending on the day even though, deep down, I knew it was because I was desperate to cling to any goodness from the past.
How sad was it that I resorted to something that was supposed to be in a dump, buried beneath almost two decades of trash, as the only memory of love from my childhood.
Mug in hand, I opened my sliding door to the small slab of concrete they called a patio, and sat in my egg chair watching the sun rise. I lived in a paradise of sorts, charm and history all around me, nature loud and bright, but I never appreciated any of it before.
I decided on this apartment building partly because I could afford it, but mainly for the picturesque beauty that gave me a reason to get out of bed every morning.
“Didn’t know I’d get such a good view for so cheap, but I’d pay ten times as much to wake up to this every morning.” I froze at the achingly familiar masculine voice coming from the right. “Oh, the sunrise is beautiful, too.”
A chill raced up my spine, and as I processed what he said, I put my feet flat on the ground and turned my head to ask, “Excuse me. What did you—” Words died on my tongue, and my heart seized when I saw him. It was Scotty.
And God, he looked even better than I remembered, and I’d thought about him so much that there was no way I could forget how sexy he was.
“W-what are you doing here?”
He tilted his head, and his lips quirked, but he didn’t answer.
The same kind of inescapable warm electricity that flowed through me months ago did it again. Just worse. Or better… it was hotter, sharper, it was just more because I knew what those fingers of his could do. I knew how he felt moving inside me. I craved his touch, his kiss, the intense way his green eyes would bore into mine. Night after night, I fell asleep to the image of him looking up at me as he showed me pleasure I’d never known.
