Page 171 of Holding On To Good

Any number of experienced girls, that was.

I’m not interested in being any girl’s first.

He wasn’t interested in her. A fact he’d made more than clear.

He may be an asshole, but she was worse.

She was a stupid, stupid girl.

He was going on with his life as if he hadn’t given her one thought since she’d walked away from him.

As if he meant every word he’d said.

Well, no more. She was done. Done thinking about Reed. Done hoping and wishing.

Done obsessing over some unattainable, bad-for-her, sullen jerk who couldn’t see her for the gem she truly was.

She closed out Instagram and FaceTimed Elijah who was in Florida for a series of games against the Marlins.

“In the middle of something,” he grunted the moment his face appeared on the screen.

He was shirtless and sweaty, his face flushed, a backward Drillers’ hat covering his dark hair.

She scrunched up her nose. “Eww. Did you answer the phone in the middle of sex? Because that is like, so rude.”

“Jesus, Verity.” He ran a hand down his face. “I’m not having sex.”

Yeah, she knew that—she could hear the clang of weights and male voices in the background—she was just messing with him. He deserved it for not using the phone manners she knew darn well he’d been taught.

And for not being more excited to hear from her.

“You shouldn’t lie to me. It sets a really bad example, especially since all I want is to emulate my big brothers which means I’ll start lying, too. I mean, sure it’ll probably start off innocently enough. A harmless, teeny, tiny fib here or there about where I was and who I was with. But then it’ll grow. Next thing you know I’m running billion-dollar scams, conning small, European countries into believing I’m a long-lost princess.”

“I’m not sure whether to be impressed by your imagination,” he said, lying back on the weight bench. “Or terrified.”

She shrugged. “Probably wouldn’t hurt for you to be a little of both. Just to be on the safe side.”

He must’ve set the phone on his chest because she had a perfect view of the industrial ceiling. “What do you want?”

“What I want is for the males of our species to not be such nimrods. But since that seems like an impossible request, I’ll settle for you hooking me up with one of your hot baseball buddies.”

He jerked upright, his phone sliding to the floor and there was a definite clunk—more than likely his hard head hitting the weight bar—followed by his muttered fuck.

Then he swiped up his phone, his angry face filling the screen. “No,” he said, glaring at her as he rubbed a red spot on his forehead, as if his little boo-boo and the many despairs currently ruining his life were all her fault. “No way in hell.”

She sighed. Nothing was easy with her brothers.

“Why not?” she asked.

His jaw tightened, which made it easier to notice the ticcing vein on the side of his neck. Like he was one wrong word away from having a coronary.

One wrong word from her, that was.

“Because you’re twelve.”

“I’m an adult,” she told Elijah and blessed be the day when she no longer had to remind any of her brothers of that fact. “A full-grown woman—”

“No. You’re not.”

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