Page 8

“Ivy and Ava are here.”
She’s says nothing as I push to my feet and cross the room. Before I can walk through the door fully, she speaks at my back.
“Keep your legs closed, Emily.”
My eyes roll so hard I can see the back of my skull.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ten minutes later and we’re on the road. Ava is driving, and Ivy is riding shotgun. I don’t mind having the entire backseat to myself, it gives me the ability to focus on the trees passing by instead of their excited conversation.
It isn’t until Ava says my name and lifts her eyes to the rearview mirror that I blink and snap out of my thoughts.
“Did you hear anything we just said?”
Not a word of it.
While they were discussing the latest school gossip and planning the rounds they would make at the party tonight, I was imagining what my future would look like asMrs. Mason Strom.
We won’t be officially engaged until after graduating college, which gives us another ten years before I have his ring on my finger. But that just means I have to behave like a modest,appropriate,future wife while he gets to be the playboy.
Again, not that I care.
Mason could fuck every willing hole on the planet - both male and female - and it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.
I just hate the idea that every day is one step closer to the grand finale of my life as Emily Donahue. I can’t even be excited about giving up my last name, or choose not to like some wives do.
Our engagement will be my funeral, and I decide right here and now that I’ll wear black on that night to mourn the loss of my identity instead of white like I’m sure my mother is planning.
“She wasn’t listening,” Ivy answers when I don’t. “Which means I have to repeat myself and say that one of the twins was just seen making out with Hillary Cornish. Can you believe that shit? She’s a walking STD factory.”
I know what she’s doing, and it won’t work.
Ever since finding out I had a few weak moments with Ezra, these two have been all but tying me up and dropping me on his doorstep.
Ava was against the idea at first, but Ivy came out of left field with the opinion that having a secret fling with him would be good for me.
Ivy knows I can’t fall in love. And when you can’t fall in love, your heart can’t be broken. Ava knows it, too, but she wasn’t immediately convinced I can have a few months of fun without developing feelings.
Blue eyes meet mine.
“Wouldn’t you like to know which twin it was?”
“I don’t care,” I lie.
And it is a lie. Just the thought of Ezra with someone else is trapping my stomach in vicious claws, talons tearing at the flesh.
If anything, this feeling is only a confirmation that I need to keep my distance. I’ve only kissed Ezra a handful of times, and already my heart is dragged into the mix.
Maybe it’s because I’mchastethat I feel like this. And by chaste, I mean so desperate and bothered to be like all the other girls that I feel naive and vulnerable when it comes to boys.
I’m not allowed to date.
I’m not allowed to know any boys.
Unless, of course, that boy is Mason Strom.
Every dance in my life has been with him, a perpetual, unwanted date to the cotillions in our youth, plus every homecoming in high school.