Page 7 of Dancing Diva
"She knows?" I ask Eva and then turn to Claire. "You know."
“I might know, but only one side of it.”
“She got the Cliff Notes version. His lying ass side is irrelevant.”
“Hang on!” I hold my hands up. “Start from the beginning. How did you two meet?”
5
CLAIRE
Eva explains to me why Adam was at the club tonight and the full story of what she was talking about on the phone with her ex.
"What school did you say she goes to?" I ask, knowing full well that she didn't say the name, but suspicion is already brewing in my mind.
“Hawthorne Academy,” she says.
“Really fancy boarding school for geniuses,” Adam explains to me.
I nod, not wanting to say that I’m already familiar with it.
Eventually Eva is called away to focus on her other tables in the place as they start to fill up, allowing me and Adam to get to know one another more as we eat. I explain what I know about what happened to the other girls in the bridal party and why he found me when our paths crossed.
"What were they thinking, leaving you alone?" He asks, anger creasing his brow.
“I can take care of myself,” I say, trying my best to sound like I mean it. “I’m not innocent or naïve or anything.”
“Really?” He smirks, pointing to my neck. “Tell that to the pearls you’re clutching.”
I flatten my palm over my collar, almost expecting to find the strand that my parents gave me when I graduated high school.
“Very funny.” I shoot him an annoyed look.
Adam reaches around the empty dishes on the table and takes my hand. “Do you want to prove it to me?”
A glimmer of mischief flashes in his eyes, and I can't deny the urge to do whatever he wants. Almost from the moment we met, I felt like Adam was a missing puzzle piece in my life. The image was still recognizable, but his missing piece just helped pull it all together. Like he's always been meant to be in my life, but I was without him so long that I learned to adapt.
"I'm game," I say, leaning close to match his posture.
"What is this place?" I ask, following Adam up the side of what looks like an abandoned building on an old iron fire escape.
"It used to be some textile factory back in the sixties, but it closed down in the late nineties."
“Are we allowed to be here?”
“Define allowed?”
I stop to glare up at him. His ass is at eye level when I do this, and my attraction to him betrays me at this moment when he catches me staring at his ass instead of the disapproving look I meant to be giving him.
“Eyes are up here, babe.” He uses two fingers to point up at his eyes.
Blood fills my cheeks, and even under the darkness of the night sky, we are close enough to the Strip for him to see my embarrassment. My lower belly tightens when I realize he's called mebabelike I'm already his.
"Come on," he says, taking my hand and leading me up the last few steps. "It will be fine as long as we stick together. I come up here all the time when I need a place to think and look over the city lights."
We reach the top, and he helps me over the lip of the rooftop wall. There's not much up here. Adam leads me over to something with a tarp draped across it. He pulls it back to reveal an old couch from the sixties—nothing cozy looking but nice enough to sit on and enjoy the view.
The skyline of the Strip all lit up from up here is unlike anything I've seen before. Sure the view in the suite was incredible because you could see everything up close, but with that closeness, you could also see the chaos. From here, the chaos isn't there to distract you. Just the lights of the city and, with a little help from the moon, a faint outline of the mountains off in the distance.
