Page 40 of To Hate Adam Connor

I quirked an eyebrow at her and patted the spot next to me. “Because I happen to know you very well.”

She smiled a little shakily and sat down. “Is it too obvious that I don’t like this part all that much? I’d much rather see the movie for the first time with just Jason and you—not with all the cameras and all these other people I don’t even know. It’s something very special to me and they don’t even know me.”

“You can ignore everyone, Olive. This is your night with Jason, try to think of it like that. No matter what, it’ll be a beautiful night. Everyone will talk about you. You should be proud of yourself.”

“I wish my parents could’ve come, but they don’t want to have all the lights and cameras on them. We’ll go out there with Jason next week and watch it with them. You being with me tonight helps calm me a little, which is a shocker, but I’m still all jittery.”

“You’re telling me.” I shook my head. “You hate it when I wake you up early, yet this morning you woke me up at five AM. I think that was my first clue as to how nervous you were.”

She gave me a sheepish smile and dropped on her back. “Going to other galas with Jason was okay, but this feels different. I don’t want the focus on me, but Megan said I’d have to do interviews with Jason. I’m gonna screw up.”

Megan was Jason’s publicist, and she was a badass.

“You’re gonna be just fine. I’ll be there. Jason will be there. After you get over the first part, the interviews, and all the flashing cameras, it’ll be amazing. The movie will be amazing.”

She nodded and closed her eyes. “Okay.”

I reached for her phone and lay next to her. “Here, let me show you something. I wanna scream and jump up and down, but I’m afraid that’ll just freak you out more.”

“Is it something bad? If it is, forget about it, I don’t want to know.”

I unlocked her phone and pulled up Amazon’s website. “Do I scream and jump up and down when it’s something bad?”

“One can never know what you’ll do.”

“Har har. Here, look at this.” I held the phone up between us so she could see.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” She was back to being number one on the Amazon charts, and quite possibly all the other platforms, too. I dropped the phone on the bed, and we stared up at the ceiling in silence. “You’re a killer author, Olive, and I’m proud of you.”

“Like a killer dick?” she asked, amusement evident in her tone.

“Exactly.”

“Okay, I can live with that. Can we talk about Adam Connor for a bit? Please. I’m sure it’ll calm me down.”

“You’re not fooling anyone, Olive,” I said. “And I don’t like the guy, what more can I say? I adore the kid, though. He’s pretty awesome.”

“And you were spending your days watching him because you didn’t like the guy, is that it?”

“That was then, this is now. He might have a fantastic body, and a good sized bulge—”

“Don’t forget the killer smile,” she reminded me.

“He never smiles at me, so I wouldn’t know that, but…”

“But what?”

“But…nothing. He is an asshole who sends innocent people to jail, and I hate him.”

“Here we go again,” Olive murmured.

You’re thinking the same thing, aren’t you? Maybe rolling your eyes? Don’t do it. Don’t get me wrong, the guy was lickable, a tree I wouldn’t have minded climbing. After all, how could I not think so after seeing him so close up? But that was before I saw his true nature.

I hated him and that was it.

“Soooo,” Olive started after a short moment. “Do you want to talk about Jameson?”

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