Thankfully, they’re ones I recognise and the moment the boss looks up she smiles warmly at me.“What can you get you, sir?”
I shake my head. “I’m fine, thank you, Mona. Just needed a few minutes,” I confess.
“Ah, well, I’ve got exactly what you need for that.”
As I take a seat at the breakfast table, she fusses around filling me a plate of goodies.
“Thank you,” I say when she places it down in front of me.
I don’t get the first canapé to my lips before a shadow falls over me. My stomach knots that either Scott or my father have followed me, but when I glance up, I find Lauren standing there.
She looks beautiful in a rich purple dress. But it doesn’t matter how good she looks, I will never want her.
“Escaping already?” she asks, quirking a brow.
“I don’t want to be here,” I mutter under my breath.
“You and me both,” she confesses, less concerned about being overheard than me. “Come on, let’s go and enjoy these elsewhere.”
Picking up the plate, she gives me little choice but to follow her when she makes a beeline for the French doors leading to the garden.
She studies the patio for a beat but quickly decides it’s not where we’re stopping before kicking off her heels and marching across the perfectly cut grass.
She doesn’t stop until she gets to the old oak tree at the very bottom of the garden, then she slips behind and disappears.
With a smirk, I follow her knowing full well that no one will see us from the house here. Not that it matters if they do. Our fathers probably wish nothing more than for us to be sneaking around together.
My heart twists painfully. I don’t want him to think that I’m following his orders. What I need to be going is marching into the house and telling him to get fucked.
My hands tremble just thinking about it.
I’ll do it. I will.
I’ll sever everything with my family if it means I get to be with Abigail.
They have nothing that I need.
They can take my trust fund, my car, my place at Saints Cross University. I don’t need any of it.
“What’s going on? You’re more on edge than usual?” Lauren asks after swallowing her first canapé.
With a sigh, I lower my arse to the ground beside her.
I debate how honest to be with her for all of three seconds. I’ve no reason to believe that I can’t trust her after what we’ve already been through together.
“I want out.”
“Out?” she echoes, her brows pinching. “Oh… Oooh. Shit, Elliot. That’s… Shit.”
“Yeah,” I muse, agreeing with her ineloquent response.
“You have a plan though, right?”
“Uh…”
“Elliot,” she chastises. “You can’t go into something like this and not have a plan. They’ll all eat you alive.”
“Fuck,” I breathe, leaning forward and dropping my face into my hands. “I just want her, Lauren. I don’t want any of this bullshit. I don’t care about any of it.”