Page 5 of Tempt My Heart

"Okay but like, what's your plan?"

"Jesse," Freya scolded and Ali rolled her eyes.

"I don't have a plan."

"Maybe I should be your plan."

Ali raised an eyebrow and Jesse grinned, showing off the piercing under her top lip. "I can throw a decent punch."

Ali laughed, knowing that had been Jesse's intent. "We all know Freya's the scary one."

She gave a mock squawk of outrage. "How am I scary?"

"Tell us again about your cop friend," Jesse said, wiggling her eyebrows.

"You could totally get away with murder," Ali agreed. "Just rich people things."

Jesse cackled along with her and Freya pouted before giving in and laughing too. On the surface, the three of them seemed like an odd group of friends. But Ali had known Jesse and Freya since college, and they had reconnected by chance through her work with Christopher. He got to meet all sorts of people when it came to running the interior design company with his best friend, David Blake. Freya's father had been a client, owning a large block of offices in New York. Whereas Jesse was big in the art world and had designed some custom pieces forHorizonswhere Ali worked, putting all three of them back in touch. It was a small world, it seemed, but Ali was just glad to have them both in her life.

Freya suddenly straightened next to her and placed her feet on the edge of the chair-table. "Everyone in."

Jesse rolled her eyes but they both compiled, too used to Freya's impromptu photo shoots. Freya didn't work a regular job, but she could easily have afforded the apartment on her own—or, honestly, one a lot nicer, but she insisted she enjoyed their company. She spent the majority of her time traveling and blogging.

"All part of being friends with an influencer," Freya said with a flip of her hair and Ali chuckled. "We really should get an actual table at some point."

They all looked at the thick, fluffy brown block that they had their legs propped up on.

"I like the not-table." Jesse frowned and folded her arms.

"Me too," Ali chipped in. "It adds character."

Freya snorted but relented and they fell back into watching Lockwood taunt a ghost.

"One day," she said suddenly and both of her friends looked to her. "I just needed tonight to feel sorry for myself and wallow. Tomorrow I'll plan, okay?."

Jesse analyzed her face, twisting her mouth up on one side. "You have an idea?"

Ali smiled slowly and it felt a hundred percent real. "I'm going to call my mom."

ChapterThree

It was funny how a good night's sleep could make you forget almost anything. Friday afternoon and Jared's threats felt distant under the morning haze of sleepiness, at least until her phone buzzed with a reminder.

Jared:Don’t think too hard on it.

He’d attached a still from the video. The threat was clear, and as much as she wanted to just stay in bed all day, wallowing, she was alsopissed. But what could she do, really? Short of breaking into his place and trying to delete the video from his cloud, which she wasn’t sure she knew how to do, she was at a loss. It had been about two AM by the time she’d crawled into bed and even then she couldn’t sleep, so she’d spent ages on her phone trying to work out what the law was in her state about blackmail and revenge porn. As best as she could understand it, she didn’t have enough proof of the blackmail or threatening behavior, and it wouldn’t count as revenge porn until Jared attempted to distribute it. She wasn’t going to let him get that far.

Ali sighed as she cradled her phone against her white pillow case, squinting from the screen’s glare against her scratchy, puffy eyes.

Her phone vibrated once in her palm before it began ringing, the chirpy tune making her temples throb in dissatisfaction after the alcohol-filled sob fest she'd held for herself last night.

"Hey, Mom."

"You didn't call me yesterday after work. Everything okay?"

She and her mom had always been close, more so after her dad died. They were all they had left. Usually Ali called at least once a week, normally after work on a Friday, but with everything that had happened yesterday it had completely slipped her mind. By the time she’d decided to call her, it was already too late for her mom to be awake.

"Sort of." She blew out a long breath. Her mom wasn't a traditionalist by any stretch of the imagination, and the termfree spiritfelt like it wasn't wild enough to describe her. As such, Ali knew there was nothing off-limits between them, no holds barred and no secrets.

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