Read Online My Best Friend's Girl by Dorothy Koomson - Free Book Online

she made the request to adopt Tegan. She knew I couldn’t look at Tegan the same ever again. I sent her Christmas and birthday presents, I sent her postcards if I went abroad, I bought her little gifts that I posted off to London. All done from a distance. At no point did I have to look at her while I made those contacts. To look at her would be to remember what my two favorite people had done. And to remember how I hurt the day it had all come out. How I’d hurt every day after that.
    I gently brushed a stray strand of hair away from Tegan’s face.
    Could I do this? Could I adopt the child of the man I had been two months away from marrying? In sleep she looked so much like him. In waking life she had shades of him too. She might grow into her looks, might become more like her dad every day. Could I bear that? Every day, day after day, for the rest of my life staring at mini Nate, being reminded of my best friend and my fiancé making love.
    This was all moot, though, wasn’t it? There was no going back now. I’d taken Tegan from her grandparents in Guildford. I’d had to—she couldn’t have stayed there a second longer—but I’d still taken her. That meant I hadn’t simply said yes to adopting her, I’d screamed it from the top of my lungs.

chapter 7
    Kamryn and I had a lot of sex without love or even real emotion in our younger days.
    Of course, it wasn’t the done thing, us being women and all, but we had our reasons.
    My reason: weariness. I, Adele Brannon, was weary. Tired of meeting another new man, of hoping he was The One, of waiting for love to blossom between us, then finding he wasn’t The One and love wasn’t planning on paying us even a fleeting visit. I believed in love, so while I waited for its arrival in my life, I concentrated on having the best sex with the best-looking men in London, just to pass the time, you know.
    Kamryn, on the other hand, didn’t believe in love. She’d experienced every type of being screwed over by men there was and had decided to give a little back—in kind. Years and years of being told you’re ugly and fat will do that. She’d often say, “It’s over, there’s nothing to talk about” but sometimes I’d catch her off guard and she’d reveal how deeply she’d been scarred by the things people used to say to her. Every day at school, bombarded with abuse. And then at home, she’d get silent calls and notes. When I met her she was a good-looking woman, but as she got older, she got better-looking, grew into her features and went from good-looking to striking. She had huge dark eyes, long eyelashes and this amazing smile. The tragedy being she never saw it, never believed it. No matter how many times you told her, she wouldn’t believe she was beautiful.
    I wasn’t surprised she was wary of people, didn’t know who to trust. The worst part was the better-looking she got, the more she attracted men who seemed to be after one thing—to make themselves feel like real men by putting down a gorgeous woman.
    It was the nice ones, the ones who’d sucker me in too, who hurt the most. They’d start off treating her well, then they would erode her confidence, put down her looks, try to douse her spark. After she’d dated a creep for six months only for him to suggest she diet to trim down her size-fourteen frame so she could fit into the size-ten dress he wanted her to wear to his work do, Kamryn changed. He was the last of the men who would make her feel like nothing, the last of those men who would be allowed to behave as if she should be grateful they even glanced in her direction. After him, Kam refused to show her soft side to another man. She didn’t have to say it for me to know that this went back to her school days. The only thing for it was to use men for sex and never let any of them get so close they could hurt her.
    About eight years ago, everything changed. We were out clubbing and as usual we stood out—she with her curves, dark skin and