Read Online Happily Ever After? (Sleeping Handsome Sequel) by Jean Haus - Free Book Online

on the door behind
me.
    Drake closes his open mouth. “What’d
she do?”
    I push away from the vibrating door.
“Came on to me.”
    “ And that’s bad?” some guy
asks as I pass him.
    “ Dude,” Drake says. “He’s
in love with Paige.”
    “ Oh yeah, Paige is hot.
Those legs are smoking h—” I whip around. He swallows. “I mean
pretty. She’s a very pretty…”
    Drake laughs. “Yeah Jimmy, shutting
your mouth might be a wise choice at the moment.”
    I turn my back on the continued stares
and go to my room. This time I lock the door. At the edge of the
bed, I sit with my head in my hands. This is bad. Real bad. Paige
is going to flip. I lift my head and my half-written message stares
at me.
    A desolate laugh escapes
me.
    I asked her to be honest with me. I’ve
always been honest with her. I reach for the laptop. It’s going to
kill me, but I’m not going to stop now.

~11~
    Paige

    Time has stopped. My hands clench
tightly in my lap. I stare at the swarm of words in Zach’s email as
my world feels like it’s falling apart. I imagine her in his room,
on his bed, and I want to vomit. Although he says he threw her out,
the images won’t get out of my head. Old doubts knot in my chest.
Did he really tell me everything? Did something else happen in his
room? Is there more than the ugly words of his message?
    His admission of idiocy doesn’t soothe
me. His confirmation I was right all along doesn’t help. I feel
like I’m at the end of my thread. Dangling below what my life is
and slowly falling into what it used to be. Life has gone from
almost perfect to suck in the span of an email message.
    My hands unclench and time moves
again.
    Standing then pacing, I take deep
breaths. I try to block the image of them together in his room with
memories. Zach surprising me with a picnic for my birthday.
Horseback riding at my cousin’s ranch one sunny Sunday afternoon.
Him carrying Emily after a long day at the beach. The feel of his
arms around me. The pressure of his hand in mine. The sensual
weight of his lips. His patience with me. His honesty. His
ever-present integrity. The timbre of his voice when he tells me he
loves me.
    Even after all of those memories, the
ugly image of Amanda on his bed stays locked in my head.
    I let out a sob and fall to the small
couch in the middle of the room. Why couldn’t she leave me alone?
Is her life meaningless to her without being able to grind me into
the dirt? Does she run on bitch fuel?
    Someone knocks on my door.
    I ignore it.
    They knock harder.
    I ignore it.
    “ Paige?” Bret says loud
enough for me to hear.
    At the sound of his voice, a friend’s
voice, I stumble to the door.
    His brows rise at the sight of my tear
stained face. “What happened?”
    Another sob escapes me. “My
boyfriend…”
    “ Oh Paige,” he says in a
soft voice then steps into the room and pulls me into his arms.
“Did you break up?” he asks while I continue to sob. I shake my
head against his shoulder. He smells heavily of cologne. I don’t
care. It just feels good not to be alone right now. He brushes hair
out of my face. “Then what’s the matter?”
    “ Him, my ex best friend…”
Pressed into his t-shirt the words come out muffled.
    “ So he
cheated?”
    I shake my head. “I don’t think so.
It’s just—it’s just that she tried and…” I’m not going to explain
my relationship with Amanda to Bret. It was hard enough explaining
it to Zach. “It brought a lot of old ugly feelings up.”
    He tugs me by the hand toward the
couch. Along the way, he grabs the box of tissues from the desk. He
pushes a tissue in my hand. “You’re sure he didn’t do anything with
her?”
    I pause, pressing the tissue to my
cheek. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
    He leans closer to me. His green eyes
narrow. “One hundred percent sure?”
    “ He’s not like that.
We’re…he’s just not like that.” My voice cracks on the last word
because Bret’s persistence is widening the crack