“Bex! Stop!”
“Sorry.” She doesn’t look sorry at all. “I’m done.”
“So you’re not going to go?” Philly moves her face closer to her phone screen, her doe eyes imploring me to reconsider.
“Of course not!” I tell her. “This changes nothing. It only brings more unwanted attention to me.”
“Relax,” Cassie says in her usual no-nonsense tone. “It’s not like anyone is going to hear that very basic description and think,Oh, Cinderella must be the elusive Lucy Dupree.There are a lot of women with brown hair and hazel eyes.”
I flush as I think about TJ thinking about my eyes and my smile. I can’t even count how many times I’ve replayed the moment when he touched a strand of my hair like he was holding a strand of gold … right before I told him I’d never been kissed.
I’m an absolute fool for admitting that, especially now that I know TJ is my polar opposite in that department. Where I’ve never been kissed, he’s very obviously been kissing a lot of women. Many of his kisses are documented for the entire world to see on social media and on sports and pop culture sites across the internet.
Which is fine. I don’t expect anything from him, and it’s another reason we very much would not work, even if I wanted us to.
“You’re right.” I take a deep breath. “I’m overreacting.”
“You’re really not going to go over there on Sunday?” Philly asks again. She’s a hopeless romantic.
“I’m really not.” I give her an apologetic frown. “The last thing I want to do is stir things up. TJ and I made a clean break. It’s better for everyone if we put the whole thing to bed.”
“To bed? Now we’re talking,” Bex says gleefully, but I narrow my gaze and she holds up her hands. “My bad, I can’t help it!”
“Anyway.” I cross my arms. “I’m sure if no one comes forward after the game on Sunday, this’ll all fade away as the latest and greatest celebrity news takes center stage.”
“You’re probably right,” Cassie says, stretching her arms over her head. “But,” she adds, “I still think you should go see him.”
I groan. “It’s like talking to a brick wall with you people.”
“Hear me out!” she argues. “You could go see him again, if for no other reason than to tell him not to push this any further.”
“That would mean telling him who I am.”
“I know.” Cassie nods. “You’ll have to figure out if that’s worth it to you. Hearing you talk about your time with TJ last weekend makes me think he’d be someone you could trust with your identity, and maybe he wouldn’t hold it against you.”
She phrases her last statement like a question.
I sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t know him that well.”
Cassie shrugs. “Just think about it.”
All I’ve been doing for the past week is thinking about TJ Wilson.
“I make no promises. Now”—I level my friends with a look through the camera—“can we talk about someone else, please?”
Chapter 11
TJ
I’m sitting in a tufted chair, talking to the line of women who’ve shown up in response to Ned’s social media post about how I’m hoping to find my Cinderella.
All in good fun, he’d said.You don’t want to always wonder who she is, do you?
I told myself that’s all it was—satisfying my curiosity where my mystery woman was concerned. But what’s that proverb about curiosity and the cat?
“Taxidermy is my passion.” The woman seated next to me leans in, holding a small, stuffed chipmunk in her hands.
I shift away as discreetly as possible, frantically trying to catch Ned’s eye. He’s at the back of the room. He and his team and several River Foxes’ security guards are vetting people as they come through, making sure that no one too outrageous or dangerous ends up in my line. I don’t know how the taxidermy lady snuck by. Ned’s had run-ins with her before.
