Page 22 of Trip Me Up

Not looking up from his own pancakes, Andrew muttered, “This guy tries anything, Jackson and I are coming for him.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m a big girl, Andrew. I can handle myself.”

He looked up at that. His gaze was full of the same pity it’d held that night six years ago when I’d sat at the dining table in front of my family, sobbing about how I needed early access to my trust fund so I could pay off Stephen or he’d release the nudes I’d been an idiot to let him take. “Are you?”

I pushed the cold eggs around on my plate. “That was years ago.”

“You have such a soft heart, Sam. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

He’d been right, once. I’d spent the past six years building layer upon layer over that soft part of me. Now my heart was like one of Mother’s pearls, strong on the outside and hiding the flaw within. Nothing was getting through.

Maybe after I had my Ph.D. and I’d moved far away from anywhere the Joneses were a household name, I’d let someone get close enough to chip away at it. But until then, I had to focus on my goals.

Goal number one: get through the tour without making a fool of myself.

---