Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Tension thickens in the silent beat—it’s not awkward. There is a pulsing heat that burns me alive. That tempts me to move closer to the scorch. To him.
Ignoring it, I end up explaining, “The martini glass was an online purchase. And we were on the road. It was complicated. I had to get it shipped to the front desk of the Motel 6 and it almost didn’t arrive before we left.”
“You never even drink out of it.” He combs a hand through his hair while maintaining supreme eye contact. It’s intense. Intrusive. The way he stares so deeply into me, as if he’s carving out chunks of my soul and inscribing himself there. If I weren’t stubborn, maybe I’d be shy. Maybe I’d blush.
But I want to intrude on his soul, too.
I stare him down. “It’s decoration, and martinis are gross. I hate when guys order them for me.”
“Yeah, well, maybe they should fucking ask first.”
“Ask what I like to drink?” I raise my brows.
“It’s not a novel concept, Phoebe.”
I shrug. “It is when they really don’t care about who I am. They just want to sleep with me, Rocky.”
He’s radiating with hotter heat. “Are we talking about marks or about guys you’re actually dating?”
I’m not dating anyone. Not for real. None of us have the luxury of keeping a relationship with anyone when we pack up and go so frequently. We’re basically nomads.
“Marks, I guess,” I answer.
He smears a hand down his mouth. It doesn’t wipe his anger away. He hates all marks. The people we deceive and scam. They’re not good people. Most of them would never receive one-way tickets to the pearly gates.
I hate them, too, but my anger isn’t a constant dark passenger like Rocky’s. My rage appears, then dies. In a vicious cycle of rebirth.
Rocky won’t mention my age. He won’t say how I’m only sixteen. How guys shouldn’t be ordering me alcohol. He’s been in similar situations even younger. At gentleman’s clubs with sons and fathers, he’s had to smoke cigars and sip whiskey to assimilate to wealthy elite culture.
Drink young. Ages aren’t restrictions when you’re rich. They’re just yellow caution tape, and you better have the expensive scissors that can cut it. Or else, maybe you don’t really belong.
Belonging is what we’re taught to do.
I check the tag on my pink bikini. He’s so close, hairs rise on my arms. Will he inch nearer?
He’s studying me, his eyes dipping up and down me. “Phoebe—”
“You want to help?” I ask fast.
“Yeah. That’s why I’m here.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Hailey had to leave with the godmothers.” Our moms, he means.
I can’t even remember when we started calling them the godmothers. Was it before or after we nicknamed his dad the godfather?
“Right.” I nod.
Oxygen seems thinner in Rocky’s presence, but I must like the feeling of being asphyxiated. That’s mildly disturbing, Phoebe.
“I can help you pick out a bathing suit, but I need to know more about this guy,” Rocky says. “The insufferable prick.”
“Kellan.”
“Whatever the fuck.”
I want to smile, but Kellan’s face flashes into focus, and I cringe. “He’s a show-off. He likes flaunting his family’s money, and he’s not discreet about it. It’s tacky. I think he’s overcompensating because his two friends come from inherited wealth, and his dad is just a hedge fund manager.”
“He sounds riveting.”
I reexamine the neon-green bikini. “Glad you think so, maybe you can kiss him for me.” I’m not looking forward to this cozy beach bonfire. At all.
“Is he into guys?” Rocky says casually, like he’d consider taking him off my hands.
“Straight.” I wince at myself as I reimagine my first and only kiss with Kellan.
“Phebs?”
I bury my hot face in my hand. “Ugh, the kiss. It was so bad, Rocky.” I’d rather be admitting this to Hailey and not her brother, but it looks like I’m getting this off my chest with him. So far, I don’t hate it.
“Bad how?” He clasps my wrist and lowers my arm.
My palm slips off my burning cheeks. Dark concern shadows his gaze, and I wonder if he thinks there was full-face grabbing and ass groping.
It wasn’t like that. “After the coffee date, we got up to say goodbye and we kissed. Then Kellan looked at me like I gave him a juvenile noogie to the head.”
He’s confused. “That doesn’t explain the actual kiss.” He rotates more to me, his thigh and knee on the bed now.
“Well that’s because it’s…hard to explain,” I say pointedly. I’m partially distracted by him caring about me enough to be here right now. He’s trying to understand me and this strange situation.
“So you got up to say goodbye, and in that moment, who kissed who?”
“I came in for the kiss. He looked at my lips. His hand was in mine.” I recite this with little to no emotion. The event was as mundane as toasting bread. In fact, watching Starbucks baristas pop a bacon-and-gouda in the toaster would elicit more excitement within me than kissing Kellan.