Page 3 of Till Death Do Us Part

“No shit. You didn’t see him? Eye color can’t be confirmed, but the rest…spot on.”

“You didn’t tell me?”

“How was I supposed to know you had an idea of thisperfectguy in your head?”

“Fair. But I do and you asked.”

“Yeah, but I expected a general picture, not for you to build him like a car.” She tucked a strand of rainbow-colored hair behind her ear. She loved colors, and the entire wheel seemed to work for her. The vibrancy made her eyes pop and shimmer like glass.

“Muscular and fast,” I said. “If we’re summing him up in terms of a vehicle.”

“In bed?”

“Rough, sometimes a little freaky, but nothing that’ll send me running, and can be romantic when the mood calls for it. But what do I know about that? The closest I’ve come to sleeping with a male was in kindergarten, when we had nap time.”

She grinned. “A dinosaur?”

“Carnivore,” I said, no hesitation. “Brings up your last question. As fierce as one in bed. His mating display?Hot.”

“And here you don’t eat meat.” She shook her head. “I’m going to wish Babbo luck with your arrangement. The guy at Jupiter didn’t even seem real—that’s how fine he was.”

“What about you?” I asked, changing the subject. How terrible would that have been to have seen the guy in my head, meet him in the flesh, and then he be forbidden to me?

She shook her head, taking a sip of her drink. “It would be too depressing to design and build a husband, then have him be a total dud. It’s almost like going to a car dealership and finding the perfect ride. Then…the price.”

“Waaa...waaa…womp.” I made a losing noise because I was just thinking the same thing.

“Exactly.” She looked over at the table again. The guys were laughing, their eyes pinging from each other to us. “I have a wild hair. I feel like I need to do something…drastic.”

“Like?”

“Like experience a man that’s not my husband.”

“Lo,” I said, but she refused to look at me.

“I wouldn’t go that far with Ben. It would have hurt too much, you know? To experience something life-changing and then have to give it up. But just one night, no strings attached…mychoice.”

That was fair, but not supposed to happen. Even though it was modern day, our arrangements were traditional.

She turned to face me. “I mean, look how gorgeous you are. It doesn’t seem fair you can’t shop around before you live happily ever after with Babbo’s choice.”

A heavy breath escaped my lips. I was sure it was still one-hundred-proof. “You can say no, Lo,” I whispered.

She wiped her eyes, glitter smearing on her palm and face. “We’re the only two left. None of our sisters said no.”

Right, because our identities were tied to our family, and we knew the consequences: we would lose our father if we denied him this. We no longer had our mother. Even if she was still alive, she had agreed with him. She loved the idea of arranged marriages for us because their love had been like a fairytale. Our father would die a lonely man without us. That was how perfect they were together. No one could measure up to her, or what they shared.

The sadness in Lo’s eyes made them hard to meet. I turned my attention back to my plate. Snatching my hand, she said, “Fuck it,” and hauled me up.

The two guys who drove us watched our every move, but they didn’t intervene when Lo started to talk to the table full of guys. She asked them if they were from Chicago. It seemed like they were just coming from a club in the city too. Friendly conversation that put no one on edge.

Besides, where would we go? We had chaperones.

It seemed like one guy was chattier than the rest, though. I could tell he was into Lo. A minute or two of back and forth went by, then Lo slowly moved her eyes to the bathroom and whispered, “Meet us outside in five.”

Chatty Guy nodded, and we headed toward the diner’s bathroom after she made a show of saying goodbye. I noted as we made our way that Curly Locks refused to look at me again.

“Lo!” I hissed at my sister as her ass hung out of the bathroom window. She was trying to climb through to get to the parking lot. We were ditching our escorts, but she didn’t even give me the plan. She just dove.

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