Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
His jaw sets, and he glares up at the night sky.
Rocky has his hands stuffed in his leather jacket, a white button-down beneath. Business and bad boy rolled into one mildly attractive look.
Okay, mildly might be too tame. He’s Carolina Reaper hot. Pieces of his black hair skim his forehead as the wind roars. This has always been his style outside of long cons, but it’s more than Rocky’s clothes and good hair and sculpted muscles that draw flames around him. The dangerous flicker in his eyes allures me like Gretel drifting toward a gingerbread house, and even seeing the perils, I still want inside.
I always have.
It’s easy to visualize men and women drooling over him as soon as he slips into the party. He’ll have no trouble finding a one-night stand.
Why did I suggest this stupid thing? My stomach is in knots, and I wait at the precipice of a cliff for his answer.
A huge part of me hopes he’ll go back on this deal. Reject it. Be so unable to even think about hooking up with someone else when I’m in a hundred-foot vicinity. The same way my insides flip and flop at the idea of fucking another person when Rocky is so near.
It feels like betrayal.
But we’re not together.
I know. I know.
Maybe I need a physical reminder that Rocky and I aren’t together. Won’t ever be together. Something to push me away from him when everything else pushes me closer.
I’m supposed to move on in Victoria. Not backtrack to what’s familiar.
Rocky lets out a low, deep breath, and he unburies his hands from his jacket. Unmistakable is the gold ring on his wedding finger.
My lips part, stunned and baffled. “We’re supposed to be divorced,” I whisper.
He’s already tugging the ring off. “We are.”
My mind reels. “But you’re playing the part of what . . . ? Bereft husband who wishes he could be back with his wife?”
“Not anymore,” Rocky says quietly, his eyes sinking on mine.
It hurts. I wish I could rewind.
He pockets the ring. “I wore it so the widowers would stop hitting on you.” He says it like the ring was nothing. A ploy. He was just trying to protect me from unwanted attention.
Okay.
Scratch the rewind. Press play.
Except, with the way we stare into each other, the emotion pooling between us is deeper than his words. I’m sixteen in the backseat of a Lamborghini with the son of a plastic surgeon. Parked at sunset with ocean views. This guy was twenty-one. Too old to be with me, but he didn’t know my age.
He didn’t ask. When he kissed me, I felt nothing.
I wasn’t even there.
Until a fist banged on the window, and I jolted.
Rocky appeared, needing a hand with his car’s dead battery. He took over the con, but he wasn’t supposed to key the Lambo at the end.
To think there is zero feeling in what we’ve done and what we do—that’d be the greatest lie we tell ourselves. And even though we’re in the business of lying to others, we’re usually truthful with ourselves, so I’m positive Rocky has acknowledged the messy, unwieldly emotion inside our jobs.
Inside us.
The wind settles down, and I uncross my arms, making the first movement in what feels like an eon.
It wakes him from a similar stupor. “You want to do this. Fine.” Rocky extends his hand. “First one to get laid wins.”
Everything is tilted. Wrong.
I shake his hand anyway.
Eighteen
Rocky
This was a fucking mistake. And I don’t cop to making them that easily, but as I weave through the half-drunken party that’s already body-to-body in the boathouse, I realize how quickly I’ve lost Phoebe.
“Can’t we take this up to the house?” someone whines. “It’s so hot in here.”
The house is the mansion at the top of the grassy hill. The boathouse is detached and basically serves as an in-laws’ suite: two bed, one bath, wine cellar, high-tech kitchen, and wood-paneled living room that’s accommodating a hundred people at minimum right now. Last I checked, the rooftop is holding half as many, and Phoebe wasn’t there.
Where the fuck is she?
I shouldn’t be searching for her. I should be seducing and flirting. Two words that dump a heap of salt in my brain. To flirt and seduce are cheap tricks everyone uses to get what they want.
Even me.
“No, no one is leaving the boathouse,” a girl says loudly and clearly over the thumping bass of today’s Top Hits. “My dad doesn’t care about this place, but if you trash the main house, I’ll be written out of the will.”
A guy laughs.
“I’m not kidding, Karl!”
Reaching a sliding glass door, I stick my head outside. Is she here? The upper deck faces the bay, and a gust of salty air and cigar smoke hits me. A couple men up-nod. The one wearing a Ralph Lauren polo and loafers gives me a suggestive once-over. “Do we know you?”