Page 23 of Cruel King

GAVIN

She said yes.

I still couldn’t fucking believe it.

I’d wanted to invite Whitley every day for the last two months leading up to my cousin’s wedding. I wanted her to go as my date. But every time we got even remotely close, she backed off. Her eyes shuttered. Her body stiffened. She’d really meant it that night she told me that she wanted us to be friends.

Then, I was down to the wire about getting a date, and I was an idiot. I asked her to be my fake date. Even though I wanted her to be myrealdate. But she wouldn’t decline when it was a game. She never would have said yes if I’d been serious. As serious as I wanted to be.

Regardless, she’d said yes.

Now, I was fishing around in my apartment for the one thing I needed to give her to make this fiction a reality.

I was minutes away from heading upstairs to help her with her bags. We were flying out that afternoon, and I still couldn’t believe that we were doing this. She’d gotten her clients rescheduled for the week. She’d gone shopping and gotten a dress that she refused to show me. And now, we just had to get on a plane and head back to the town where I was raised.

God, my family was going to be a pain in the ass about this.

I continued to rummage through my drawers. I could haveswornI’d stuffed that thing back here somewhere. Admittedly, it had been a few years since my mother had given it to me, and I’d rolled my eyes, tossing it unconcerned into the back of a deep dresser drawer. When the hell was I going to need that anyway?

But now, I fucking needed it.

I reached my arm farther back into the drawer and felt the edge of a velvet box.

“Aha!” I said triumphantly, retrieving the little black box.

I popped it open and glanced inside to make sure it wasn’t empty. That would have been one hell of a surprise. Satisfied, I pocketed the thing with relief.

All set.

I slung my suit bag over one shoulder and pushed my suitcase toward the door. I took the elevator to Whitley’s floor and knocked twice. I couldn’t deny that I’d liked having her only an elevator ride away for the last couple of weeks. Getting coffee for her had been a pretense to see her.

What had happened in the following weeks still surprised me. We’d started to get coffeetogether. I gave up my car in the mornings and took thesubway. Me. Who the fuck would have guessed? And it hadn’t even been terrible. Not when I had her at my side to make jokes with all morning on our way uptown.

The door creaked open, and I looked into Whit’s apartment at a gorgeous blonde.

My eyes rounded in shock. “Your hair!”

She laughed, almost self-conscious. “Thanks, King. That makes a girl feel good.”

“But the purple,” I said regretfully. “I liked it.”

Her smile was genuine then. “Me too. But I know what Texas weddings are like. Bleach is a safer choice than color.”

Before I could stop myself, I reached forward, threading my fingers through the now–Marilyn Monroe–blonde color. She stilled under my touch.

“You could have just been yourself. You didn’t have to change it.”

She gulped and pulled back with another laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m dyeing it again as soon as I get back.”

“Good,” I said, stuffing my hand into my pocket to keep from touching her again. “Are you ready to go?”

She looked half-ready to run. I could see that all over her.

“I still can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s crazy, right?”

“It’s going to be fun,” I told her with ease. I didn’t want her to back out now. “You already have the time off and a new dress and new hair.”

“I do, and I did. Yeah. But this is wild, even for me.”

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