Page 99

“Okay. At least I don’t have to kill him. So, what happened? He slept with you and then never called you again?” Nathan relaxes back into the seat.
“Something like that.” Except it was nothing like that. I would’ve gotten over a boy not calling me back. Instead, I fall right back into my usual rhythm with Nathan—lies and half-truths.
“I can’t fire him for being a slut five years ago, Spencer. I kind of want to, but thanks to my dad he has some leverage over us. I can’t even tell you what because I don’t want you subpoenaed if it ever comes to that. Are you scared of him?”
“No,” I say. “More like he should be afraid of me if we’re in the break room alone and there’s a kitchen knife in sight.”
He blinks at me. “Noted. I’ll keep him out of your way best I can. Will that work?”
“Yes.” I try but I’m not even convincing myself.
“I’m here whenever you need me. I don’t know exactly what you are to me, Spencer, but it’s very important. Get used to beingmy priority.” He kisses my forehead, and it breaks my heart. Crown the prince, because he just became a king in my eyes. A king that will never be fully mine because he lost his real queen.
I’m sick of life dealing me impossible cards. I want to talk to God or the universe directly and let it know it made a mistake. I cannot, in fact, handle anything on my plate, so it can cease and desist with testing my strength.
“So what now?” I ask.
“What’s your dress size?”
My heart races like the Roadrunner fleeing from Coyote, preemptively sensing a dangerous trap. “Why would you ask me that?”
“My dad’s fiancée is hosting a charity auction event on Saturday night. I want you to attend with me. It’s a black-tie event and most of the people in attendance collect Maseratis like they’re stamps. I’m not trying to sound like an ass, but I have a feeling you don’t have a suitable dress in your closet.” He touches my empty earlobes, frowning. “Did you toss the earrings after we fought?”
“Nathan, I would never throw those away.” I touch his smooth cheek affectionately, and he nuzzles into my hand. “That’s wasteful. I’d pawn them if I needed to.”
He pulls away with a scowl. “That smart mouth. Anyway, I need to get a designer started on your dress today. What’s your size?”
He simply wants a number to pass along to whatever designer he’s going to bully into working forty-eight hours straight on a dress that probably costs more than my childhood home. He doesn’t understand what a loaded question it is. Nathan might as well be asking me for my weight. And here I am again, naked in a poster displayed all over campus, my shame on display for the hungry lions to shred me apart.
Not using my brain, I lie, telling him two sizes smaller than I actually am. I haven’t eaten all week, maybe I magically shrunk to my goal weight?
He thinks nothing of it. “Got it. And can you get a sitter for Charlie?”
“I don’t think so. My friends are out of town and Charlie’s best friend has a different sleepover this weekend. I could ask Dawn?”
Nathan shakes his head. “She’ll be at the event too. Okay, no problem.”
Relief washes over me. I can’t go and Nathan will never know my true dress size, unless he snoops through my closet to check my tags, but what kind of psycho does that?
“What’s Charlie’s size?”
“Ten in girls,” I answer on autopilot, not realizing where he’s going with this.
“Good. Family date night, then.”
I should be panicking because of the mess I just got myself into. But my brain completely emptied when he saidfamilydate night. “Sounds great.”
He raises his arm over the top of the sofa, inviting me to relax against his chest. I take in his office, trying to remember how long we have before the return window closes on this furniture.
“Are we ever going to redo your office?”
He laughs. “Eh, it’s actually growing on me.”
32
Nathan
“Are there going to be celebrities tonight?” Charlie asks all bug-eyed. Her shin-length, dark blue, sequin dress makes her blue eyes look bigger and brighter. So she kind of looks like a lemur in the midst of all her excitement. The limo driver has had to circle the block three times now because she’s so unwilling to get out.