Page 50 of Just This Once

But Sharon and Bill Porter were just…gratefully polite.

It was too bad they weren’t family, though. I could’ve used some decent parental wisdom right about now.

Because Hope had gotten me all kinds of fucked up with her “I’m dying; please sleep with me” bit.

Jesus. She was such a liar.

I mean, shehadto be lying.

No way would she not tell Alec if she was legitimately sick. She told the little shit everything.

And unfortunately, he spilled everything to her in return. Because of him, she had untold amounts of dirt on us, which she liked to useagainstus.

I still wasn’t sure how she’d learned that she could use sex against me, but I wasn’t a fan of this power switch.

I was well aware that as soon as she tricked me into saying anything close to a yes to her little bucket list request and revealing how much I wanted to get inside her, she was going to turn it all around and torture me with it.

That’s all this was; one of her new, twisted games.

She wasn’t fucking dying.

To prove it, I tried to research her. Except she didn’t update her social media worth shit, her medical records were a no go, and short of calling her mother and straight-up asking, which I couldn’t bring myself to do because I hated Liz Shoney, Hope’s health remained a mystery.

She sure didn’t look like someone on the brink of death, though. I mean, shouldn’t she be all yellow if her liver was failing? Shouldn’t some of that evil spunk she possessed be depleted from her sails?

She just didn’t act like someone who truly believed she was terminal.

And thus, I stood by my theory that she was punking me.

Well, I wasn’t falling for it.

The brat wasfine.

And I was going to figure out some way to expose her.

I considered going to Alec, telling him everything she’d said to me, to just call her out on it, you know.

But he’d probably end up believing it and unnecessarily get all freaked out and worried. I didn’t want him to have to go through that. And even after he gleaned the truth from her, he’d probably remain suspicious ofme, wondering why she’d tried to pick on me with the promise of sex. It wouldn’t take him long to realize I was attracted to his sister.

I think I’d rather someone just cut off my balls right now than make that secret public.

So I couldn’t go to Alec.

Unless… This was part of some kind of test. Maybe Hope had no intentions of using my own attraction against me, she was just testing my loyalties to her brother. Because if Ididn’tgo to him about this, and thenshedid, telling him what she’d propositioned me with, he’d probably never trust me again.

Which—fuck—put me in a predicament I didn’t particularly care for.

This was why I couldn’t stand her sometimes. If only I knew her endgame, I could counter her next move so much easier.

So… I had to go to Alec.

Yet I couldn’t.

Gah, what the fuck was I supposed to do?

Wait. Thane would know. Thane always knew the right thing to do. So there; I’d just go to Thane. Problem solved.

Pulling up his contact in my phone, I attempted to text him for a meet-up, only to pause and glance through our last handful of conversations.

---