Page 30 of A Damaged Soul
Having my friend come over was the best decision I could've made. Without much work at all, she reduced the anxiety I was feeling and brought laughter to my day.
"But in all seriousness, you do realize you're falling for this man, right?"
The laughter I was feeling washed up and sadness took over. With a heavy sigh, I answered. "I know I am, but I don't think hefeels the same way." I held up my hand before Molly could say something else. "If I admit my feelings now, I'm going to push him away."
I didn't need to know Rhett well to know my statement was true. His demeanor practically screamed that was how he felt.
"I'm sorry for bringing it up."
"No, it's okay. I knew the moment I met him that he wasn't the relationship kind of person. I was the idiot who went and fell for an emotionally unavailable guy."
It sucked really because I couldn't remember the last time a guy made me feel this way.
"So what are you going to do?"
That was a no-brainer. "Continue to be his friend. He needs that, and I refuse to take that away from him just because I caught feelings."
I hated to see the look of pity on my friend’s face. "What's that look for?" I asked her.
"I'm just worried about you, is all. I hate to see you get hurt."
"I know you are, and that's why I love you, but I've got this. I promise." Whether I actually had it or not was yet to be determined, but I would try my damn best. I shook away all the sadness and plastered a real smile on my face. "Let's forget about Rhett for a little while and talk about which book is going to be our next read."
I could tell that Molly wanted to argue, but she proved just how good of a friend she could be by allowing me to change the subject.
"All right." She rubbed her hands together. "Which trope is it going to be this time?"
I didn't have to think about it long. "Enemies to lovers. Preferably a mafia romance."
"Oooooooh." Molly wiggled. "I like where you're going with this. Let's look up some and pick our favorite."
This was how we picked our book each time. Once we picked a genre or trope or, like tonight, sometimes both, we would use social media to search for authors and books. Then we would read the blurbs and look at the covers to see which one jumped out at us the most.
Molly and I had very similar taste, so it was rare that we couldn't agree on a book. The rare times that we didn't, we would just add the book to our personal TBR lists and move on.
Tonight was one of the simple times, and we found a book within thirty minutes. Once we had it, we started to read, and that was how we spent the rest of the evening.
Eating, drinking, and reading.
What better way to spend the night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rhett
Motherfucking hell!
Two to three days my ass.
We were now five days into this assignment, and things had gone to shit.
"This is all your fault," I moaned to Matthew as I spit blood onto the concrete floor below where we were being strung up by chains. All six of us on the team were hung by our wrists in different locations throughout the warehouse.
"You're the idiot who asked how long we would be gone. You should know better than to put that bad juju into the air," Matthew groaned back.
Each one of us was in different stages of undress with bruising and blood covering most of our exposed skin.
As it would turn out, this wasn't an easy assignment but rather a setup. And like a bunch of amateurs, we walked straight into the trap.
