Page 76 of The Reading

“You take a shower, get ready, pick some clothes that you’d like to keep at my place, and then when we get to my house, I’ll pick out some clothes and toiletries to bring back here with me,” she offered as a compromise.

Not satisfied with that, I said, “Or you could save us a lot of time and trouble and just move in with me.” Her black eyes flared. “We don’t need to take this slow, Zara. You’ve been by my side for four years already. There’s nothing about me that you don’t know.”

Her eyes searched my hazel ones for the truth. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

I nodded as I tucked a few black strands of hair behind her ear. “You have no idea,” I chuckled softly. “Being with you twenty-four hours a day still won’t be enough for me. I’m pretty sure that I’m obsessed with you, baby.”

“This won’t be easy,” she warned. “The office, the-”

“People take easy for granted,” I told her. “The harder we fight to be together, the less likely that we’ll ever lose sight of why we’re doing this. I’m in this to do this forever, Zara.”

Her eyes were beginning to water. “Merry Christmas to me,” she grinned through her tears.

A New Everything This Year

There was no longer denying Madam Brousseau’s gifts or contributing everything to coincidence. There was no more denying what was right in front of me. Well, in front of us all. Now, while Madam Brousseau had left out the holiday element in her prediction, it was pretty obvious that New Year’s was my holiday. I just wasn’t sure if it was New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day that would drop my soulmate in front of me. The rules of Madam Brousseau’s predictions were still a little vague.

When Vivian had insisted that we all go to Las Vegas to get my mind off what Cortland and Sarah had done to me, we hadn’t had any plans to look for a genuine voodoo priestess. The plan had been to get drunk, go partying, then get under some hot guys. Well, we’d gotten drunk and had even gone partying, but no one had gotten laid. Instead, we’d ended up at Madam Brousseau’s, and talk about a life changing visit to a psychic palm reader. Even though we hadn’t even paid Madam Brousseau, the girls had still found their soulmates, and Vivian was even getting married in a couple of months.

As for Cortland and Sarah, we never did find a genuine voodoo priestess, so I was fairly certain that his penis was still intact, though it wasn’t that impressive of a penis to begin with. I’d been in love, or so I’d thought, and love made women stupid, blind, gullible, and did I say stupid?

I’d been with Cortland for a year before we’d gotten engaged, and I had never suspected that he was such a snake in the grass. He’d been sleeping with Sarah for months, and I still felt waves of anger whenever I let myself think about it too much.

After I’d caught them together, all hell had broken loose, and rightfully so. My dad had only been remarried for a couple of years, and while he had chosen my side, he had also chosen his new wife’s side.

My parents had divorced years ago, and while my mother had moved on rather quickly, my father hadn’t. Granted, it had been my father’s fault thatthey had divorce, but I’d still been happy when he had finally started dating again. For years, he had taken my mother for granted, and even when she had begged him to really listen to her, he hadn’t. Two years after going to therapy alone, she had chosen happiness, then had filed for divorce.

When my father had started dating Cindy, I’d been happy for him, and even a little excited to have a stepsister. As an only child, I’d thought that Sarah coming into our lives was going to be a good thing.

It wasn’t.

Nowadays, I barely spoke to my father on the phone, and I avoided Cindy and Sarah at all costs. Sure, she’d gotten the ass kicking of her life, but she deserved worse. Like Cortland deserved to have his dick shrivel up, Sarah deserved to have her vagina rot.

So, even though we hadn’t found a voodoo priestess to do the honors, we’d found something better instead. The girls were happily in love, and even though I was still single, I was happy for them. There’d never been any cattiness between us, and it was a real blessing that we were all still as close as we were.

“I’m sorry, Alessa, but what the fuck?”

I glanced over at my boss. “What?”

It was New Year’s Eve, and we were in the back, setting up inventory for the most efficient way to restock the bar when night fell. It was only six in the evening right now, so we weren’t packed just yet. Plus, Carter always paid us extraordinarily well to work this particular holiday, so we were always overstaffed on New Year’s Eve, and that made it easier to help with things like inventory.

“Did you…did you hear the words that just came out of your mouth?”

Carter wasn’t one to mince words. As the owner of Drops of Heaven, the man wasn’t one for bullshit. He didn’t have patience for drunks or idiots, and I thought that rather ironic, considering.

He was also thirty-three, six-foot-three, had dark blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, a body that saw the gym every day, and he was just plain flippin’ gorgeous. He didn’t have that soft blonde surfer look, no. He had that rugged lumberjack look, though without the beard. He was not a man to mess with, and those arms had just the right amount of muscles to bang me up against the wall.

Of course, as my boss, Carter Nightingale was off-limits. It was rumored that he didn’t date his employees, but since his love life wasn’t any of my business, I hadn’t ever asked. Oh, there’d been lots of whispers and wishes spoken among the other bartenders, but if we wanted to keep our jobs, it was best to admire the man from afar.

I was pretty sure that he also thought that I was crazy.

Chapter 1

Alessa~

“What?” I repeated.

Carter pinned me in place with those icy-blue eyes of his. “Alessa, you’re talking about shriveled up dicks, rotting vaginas, a psychic palm reader, and holiday voodoo,” he recited. “I mean, what the fuck?”

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