PROLOGUE
BIANCA
I saton the small queen-size bed and watched Lucinda apply a bright shade of red lipstick on her naturally pouty lips.
Her long, dark-blonde hair was curled and flowed straight down to her rib cage, drawing attention to the swell of her breasts.
Her eyes twinkled as she checked herself in the mirror.
She had been like this for months now.
It started when she went out to the nightclub on one of those rare occasions I wasn’t with her and met a man.
A mysterious man named Luis.
That was all I knew about him.
I had a feeling that was all she knew about him, too, though she never said.
Whatever the case might be, Lucinda was smitten, and I couldn’t help but feel a small tinge of worry over that.
Lucinda and I had been best friends since we were eight when I moved in next door to her.
We had remained friends through the turbulent highs and lows of our lives. Even through the time her mom passed away in a freak accident when Lucinda was thirteen, leaving her to fend for herself against her abusive asshole of a father, to when my dad passed away in a flood in Florida when he went to visit some family when I was fifteen and was subsequently forced into foster care.
Lucinda and I never lost contact, and some days it felt like she knew me better than I knew myself. But the older we got, the more it felt like Lucinda was pulling away from me. Or maybe it wasn’t so much of her pulling away but the inevitable distance that seemed to expand between us the older we got.
Otherwise, why would it have taken this long for her to tell me about this mysterious man?
The same man who had bought her the luxurious three-bedroom apartment we were currently in. Otherwise, neither of us would have been able to step foot into this building, much less live in it.
We were both in our second year of college.
Lucinda had suggested I come and live with her, but something about living in a place purchased by a man I didn’t know made me feel strange.
I now lived in an off-campus apartment with another girl, Kaia Thompson.
Kaia and I were pretty close, and aside from Lucinda, I considered her my closest friend, but Kaia and Lucinda didn’t get along.
They weren’t hostile toward each other, but they didn’t like each other and preferred not to spend time in each other’s presence.
That was why I was going out to the nightclub with Lucinda by myself, to hopefully meet Luis.
Kaia was at home by herself, doing a scary-movie marathon.
I wished I was there, but because of how far Lucinda had withdrawn from the life we had before she met Luis—and from me—we hadn’t hung out with each other in a long while.
“What do you think?” she asked, turning fully to me.
I smiled as I took her in, my heart full of love for the girl who had been like a sister to me.
“I think you look beautiful.”
Her eyes softened, and her shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to be nervous. I think Luis will have a hard time keeping his hands to himself once he gets a good look at you.”
Her eyes glinted in happiness. “You really think so?”