Page 137 of Keep Me Never
Mr. Randolph grabs the envelope, and I sit, fuming, as he folds it in half, then leans over to stuff it in the pocket of my button-up.
I look from it to him, eyes sharp and hatred burning through my veins.
“We don’t want her to see this, son.”
“I will tell her. Right now.”
“If you tell her, the deal is off. Clean break, which is what you’ll give her, and she will be better because of it. Or you can tear that check up, we’ll forget this conversation ever happened and I’ll never make the offer again.” He pulls back, his entire face changing in an instant.
It brightens and the old man smiles. “Prescott! What are the odds?” His eyes move to mine, and my brows slice together.
I look behind me just in time to see him ushering Paige back to her seat.
She smiles up at me, radiant and fucking perfect, untainted by the hardships she’s known. Untainted by this man and the money he has. The world he’s trying to push her into rather than letting her make the choice herself.
“I ran into Prescott around the corner.” She comes to my side.Her hand on my chest. “He was telling me about this new place downtown. It has milkshakes named after our dorm buildings. How fun, huh?”
I smile, and it’s so plastic, I can taste it, looking up as the man steps into my line of sight.
“Good to see you, Chase.” He offers me his hand, his smile a genuine, flawless one.
The moment mine lands in his, it’s like something clicks. Suddenly, it all makes fucking sense.
My heart sinks as I comprehend what just happened and why. I glance at her, and then at him, my brain connecting all the damn dots.
It’s him, the man her grandfather wants her to…to marry. Prescott.
He was at the show that night, hundreds of miles from where he belonged.
The lunch Grant showed up asking to take her to, the one I crashed… He meant for it to be a lunch for them to get to know each other.
Prescott asked her on that date, a date that Grant gave him the extra ticket to, likely insinuating he should ask her—a soft launch of her on his arm in front of their peers.
The country club golf day. I thought it was innocent, that I was secure in my relationship, even if I did make it a point that she was taken, just in case, but maybe it was more than I realized. She did say she met a lot more people from their world that day, Prescott likely at their side.
My original suspicion had been true after all, but I let it go once she became mine, because it didn’t matter after that, or so I had thought.
And now he’s here, standing beside her today, playing right into the hand that Grant dealt him, because as few times as I’ve met Prescott, I know he’s, at the very least, a decent person. He’s never gone out of his way to act superior, never flat outdisrespectful or flaunty, when he very well could be. No, he wasn’t in on this.
He’s the trickery in someone else’s playbook and I don’t think he knows it.
Grant wantsmeto see the competition, I realize.
Why?
This whole time, since before she and I ever even came close to making our feelings known, Grant has been planning.
This was a fight for her hand that I didn’t even know I was in, and I just so happened to win. But it wasn’t a fair fight.
No, this game was rigged from the start.
My eyes snap to Grant Randolf, the cold, cunning bastard.
He lifts his glass, his blue eyes locked on mine, a message I can’t read written within them. “To family and, most of all, to loyalty. For without it, the first wouldn’t even exist.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Chase
