Page 240 of By His Rule

“Usually, I hit the gym first thing. Then I might do some work or spend the afternoon with family.”

“Friends?” she asks.

“I’ve got a few, yeah. Nothing like what you have with Tate, though.” I rub the back of my neck, nervous about my next confession. “My brothers are my ride and die. Always have been.”

“Aw, that’s cute.”

“I’m not cute, Lorelei.”

“You can be, every now and then. Not very often, though.”

“I never really connected with anyone else. Not on that kind of level, anyway.”

“I get it. What Tate and I have is special. Sisters from different misters.”

“Is your father as bad as hers?”

Lorelei freezes. It’s not a surprise; she gets hella awkward every time family or her former years are brought up.

I want to know, though. I want to learn more about her and why she is the way she is, and I think that her past holds the key to a lot of that.

“I don’t know who my father is,” she confesses after a few silent seconds.

“Oh, okay. So there’s a good chance he could be worse, then. Probably for the best you don’t know him.”

“Yeah,” she muses, deep in thought, letting me know that this is a subject she’s thought about a lot over the years.

“What about your mom?”

“Do we have to do this?” she asks, abandoning her sandwich on her plate as if she’s just totally lost her appetite.

“No, we don’t have to. I was just curious about your life before becoming an employee at Callahan Enterprises.”

She hangs her head and lets out a long sigh.

“My life was shit until the day I started at college and met Tate. Nothing before that day—aside from my brothers being born—is worthy of being discussed. I try not to think about it, let alone talk about it.”

“Okay,” I state before biting my sandwich.

She looks over and narrows her eyes in suspicion.

“Okay? That’s it?”

“Yeah. Why? Is that the wrong answer?”

“N-no. I just…I wasn’t expecting you to drop it that easily.”

“You’ll tell me when you’re ready,” I reply confidently.

“Okay, so afternoon with family, and then the evening on a date with a celebrity or socialite?”

“I might attend an event?—”

“With said date,” Lorelei adds bitterly.

Joy lights me up inside that she gets just as jealous as I do.

“I don’t date every weekend. And sometimes I go to events alone.”

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