Page 73 of The Payback Plan
Astrid
Me too!
Paige never knew it was possible to be so utterly relieved and yet so full of dread at the same time. She didn’t think she could bear it if they hated her which would, of course, be a perfectly natural reaction.
Fingers trembling, she hit the video call icon in the PM group.
Her face appeared on screen, her freckles popping in her pale complexion as if to broadcast her guilt even further. They’d always been a true barometer of her emotions. The phone’s muted ring felt like the chimes of doom as she waited for the other two to pick up.
Sienna, who was driving her car, beat Astrid by a millisecond and Paige almost cried when their faces filled their third of the screen. Seeing them again took her right back to that day they’d first met and she was both grateful and even more wretched that she’d screwed it all up.
It seemed like this was the morning for contrasting emotions!
Astrid was the first to speak with no perfunctory hello. She looked more aglow than usual, her cheeks pink – she’d probably been to one of those hot yoga sessions she loved so much – and her eyes bright. And why wouldn’t they be? She was on the righteous path, unlike Paige who had submitted to the bloody devil.
‘What happened?’ she demanded straight out of the gate. ‘Are you okay?’
Paige shook her head. She was decidedlynotokay. Which sucked considering she’d just had a weekend of debauchery that had completely rewired her damn brain. ‘I did a bad, bad thing.’
‘Uh oh,’ Sienna said, her eyebrows beetling together. Even frowning she managed to look like the honey-blonde goddess from the airport. When Paige frowned she looked like her uncle Fred who resembled a giant ginger Santa Claus. ‘You want to start at the beginning?’
The beginning? Paige wasn’t even sure where the beginning was. How had this happened? When she tried to parse the events of the last month or so, she couldn’t really pinpoint a moment when she’d started to mellow towards Oliver.
‘Something’s happened… between Oliver and me.’
‘Something?’ Sienna pushed.
Paige nodded miserably, her eyes still on Oliver. C’mon woman, big girl pants… ‘Promise me you’ll let me get this out before either of you say anything or I might not be able to get through it?’
‘Paige.’ Sienna’s frown deepened as she pressed her lips together. ‘You’re scaring me a little now.’
‘Of course we promise,’ Astrid agreed, a sudden intenseness in her eyes, like she was invested in every word. ‘You know you can tell us anything This is a no-judgement zone.’
Yeah.Until it wasn’t.
‘Now, come on, deep breath,’ Sienna coaxed. ‘You’ll feel better once you’ve told us.’
Okay, well, here went nothing. ‘We… kissed.’ Which was a massive understatement but she needed to start small.
Sienna blinked at the confession, her eyebrows conveying her surprise by leaping almost to her hairline.
Paige cleared her throat as the lump intensified. ‘The first time?—’
‘The first time?’ Sienna interrupted, her voice an octave higher at the end.
‘Sissi,’ Astrid chided softly, using her nickname for Sienna. ‘We promised.’
‘Oh God, sorry, you’re right.’ Sienna grimaced. ‘Keep going.’
‘The first time he was tipsy and he kissed me. The next time’ – Paige shut her eyes briefly before opening them and looking straight at these women she’d grown to love in such a short period of time – ‘I kissed him when I was a little tipsy. So we just’ – she shrugged – ‘put it down to alcohol.’
‘Hell, we’ve all been there, babe,’ Astrid said, quickly dismissing the episodes. ‘Totally happens.’
Sienna side-eyed Astrid, her expression conveying that it didn’t happen in her world but kept her lips zipped.
‘The third time…’ Her voice wobbled. ‘We were both stone-cold sober. And I can make up a bunch of excuses about feeling sad about Casper leaving and comfort and blah blah blah but really, we were just totally fucking hot for each other.’
There it was. Right there. She had the hots for Oliver Prendergast.
