Page 10 of Keeping Our Secrets

Hi! Is everything okay? I haven’t heard from you in a while.

A week later.

Me:

We need to talk.

A week later, when I couldn’t handle the radio silence, I sent him one last message.

Me:

I'm moving.

That night, when he didn’t respond, I blocked his number.

CHAPTER 4

Liam

A couple of months had passed since my week in Paris, yet I still couldn’t get my mind off the woman I spent the last weekend of it with. Hooking up with a stranger hadn’t even been at the top of my list when we planned our trip. It wasn’t like I needed to travel to another country to find a one-nighter. Yet the moment I spotted her walking into the nightclub wearing a skin-tight dress, all bets were off.

While her friend was touring the sights, we were exploring each other between the sheets. My dad worked for a large hotel chain that owned one of the Paris properties, so I got my friends and me a deal for the week. Each of us had our own rooms and until the weekend I met her, we had done everything together.

Until she entered my orbit.

After that, nothing else mattered.

She was also there with a couple of friends who didn’t mind at all when she disappeared.

One night of mind-blowing sex was followed by another because I just couldn’t seem to get enough of her. It wasn’t just my dick talking because I had been with more than a few women, but there was something about her that kept me coming back for more. Besides being physically compatible, we also had some great conversations when we weren’t sleeping or screwing.

On the last morning, I woke up alone. The only reminder that she had been there was the sweet scent of her perfume on the pillow beside me. It had been the first time I wasn’t the first one to leave in the morning. Hell, most of the time I didn’t spend the night.

If they weren’t my girlfriend, there wasn’t an obligation.

But it was different with her.

From the moment I saw her, we just clicked. When she left, a part of me had been thankful we didn’t have to deal with the awkward goodbyes. It disappointed a tiny part of me when she didn’t get my number, but at the same time, it worked out perfectly.

On the last night we were there, I had almost left it alone. But then I remembered my connections, so I conned her friend’s phone number out of the main desk. Since then, we’d been texting back and forth with a couple of video calls when we could. It was going good, until last month when she sort of dropped off the planet. I chalked it up to her moving on with her life, so after my last unanswered text, I did, too.

After all, we were from two different countries.

Besides, I had a five-year plan that didn’t include the distractions of a romantic entanglement.

For the past couple of days, I had busied myself with cleaning out the spare room for my new stepsister. My dad had been dating his high school sweetheart for the past six months, so I wasn’t that surprised he took it to the next level. What I hadn’t expected was getting a little ankle biter out of the deal. When I said as much to him, he told me she just graduated high school and was planning on taking a gap year.

That was all he told me about her, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about sharing the house for the summer with a girl so close to my age. Then again, it could have been worse. She could have been a bratty ten-year-old hell bent on ruining my summer vacation. Hopefully, he didn’t expect me to chauffeur her around.

My life as an only child was ending, but thankfully I was only at home for the summer vacation. I wouldn’t be around to deal with all the changes beyond that. In a couple months, I would pack up to leave for uni in Glasgow. One more year left of school before I graduated and then I could start my career in business.

No clue where I would live after that, but I was itching to get on with my life and start making some money.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to think about any of that right now because they would be here in a couple of days and I wanted to hang with my friends tonight before my dad roped me into showing the new women in his life around.

* * *

Later that night, I hopped off the bus and headed into a pub on Princes Street, where my friends had told me they would be. I usually spent my summer vacation hanging out with them because I knew once we graduated we would go our own direction. Who knew where we would be after that, so I wanted to hang with them as much as I could while we had the freedom to do so? We might even end up on opposite sides of the country or even the world. Who knew what the next chapter of our lives would contain?

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