“Um, Charlotte,” Paige began, “why don’t you go get Nicole something to drink? Her sore throat must be getting to her.”
“Money, honey,” Charlotte said to Nicole.
Nicole worked a hand loose from the edge of the table and placed it palm up, empty.
“I already bought you a strawberry daiquiri with an umbrella.” Charlotte nodded at the empty glass in front of her then shook her head at the ceiling. “Fine. Scoot.”
Nicole rose from the booth, avoiding all eye contact with William, but then tripped on the floor or the air or something. William caught her elbow. When she steadied herself, she finally looked up at him.
Paige gripped my thigh, stirring my dick, and leaned forward with an enormous smile on her face to watch them. Was this some kind of match-making thing happening here?
Charlotte stood from the booth, her smile sliding into twisted pain.
“I can go, Charlotte,” Paige announced, frowning at her friend.
“I got it.” She held up a hand and hobbled off.
“Are you all right?” William asked Nicole.
“It’s my socks,” Nicole said.
William frowned and looked at the socks in question. I did, too, out of curiosity. Below her knee-length black skirt, she wore stars and cats with laser beams shooting out of their eyes. This redhead was a trip.
“I like your socks,” William said with a genuine smile.
Paige squeezed my thigh then took her hand away and sat back, a satisfied grin on her face. My whole body burned for her touch once again, but I settled on entwining our fingers on the seat between us.
She looked at me, her mouth opened slightly, her gaze drifting from my eyes to my lips and back again. I traced her fingers with mine while I rubbed a slow circle into her thumb. The turbo charges from the skin-to-skin contact were enough to drive me mad.
“Are there police cars outside, William?” Paige asked without breaking my gaze. Her chest heaved with an uneven breath.
Something had changed between us, a physical connection that wasn’t just about fucking. I saw it in the new way she looked at me, at the way she stroked my fingers back. It was like a promise she intended to keep, but for some reason, I thought the promise was more for her. A promise to herself. Sweet Jesus, she’d spun me about until I made no fucking sense, but I was okay with it. More than okay.
Tonight, she was laughing again after two weeks of...not silence exactly, but not my usual Paige. My Paige. The sound of that inside my head fueled me with enough balls to conquer the whole fucking world. I wanted her to be mine. I wanted that more than anything.
“I didn’t see any cops,” William said as he and Nicole settled themselves across from us. “Why? Is there trouble?”
“Maybe they left,” I said in an attempt to cover up my lie. “But this club isn’t the safest. I’ve heard stories, and apparently there are people snorting up in the bathroom. We should go.”
“We should,” Paige agreed absently, her gaze flitting down to our clasped hands on the seat.
“But Charlotte,” Nicole said. “My drink.”
Paige dug in her purse for her phone. “I’ll text her.” When her phone’s screen lit up her face, she stared at it as if she was a deer caught in headlights. An unhappy deer.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and my guts dropped to my knees. Probably Hill asking where I was. But it wasn’t from Hill. Rose’s duck face picture smiled from the top of the screen. And underneath, it read:
There is no debt.
Strobe lights circled around the message, carving it out and branding it to the backs of my eyes where it burned and bled.There is no debt. What the fuck did that mean?
Paige was saying something, and she pushed me out of the booth.
But before I could move, two bodies blocked our way.
“Leaving so soon?”
The familiar voice lifted every hair on my body to high alert. I didn’t even have to glance up to know it was Hill. I did anyway to read his intent. Or tried to anyway. He hid everything behind that creepy grin and his sunken black eyes, which were aimed at Paige in a way that twisted my stomach. He’d already taken my sister; fuck if I would let him anywhere near Paige.
