Page 34 of Soul Mates: Hercules Valentine and I
She hesitates. “Yeah?” She sounds wary.
“I have to tell you something.”
“You’re not pregnant by that creep, are you?”
I shake my head at the absurdity of her question. “No. It’s something far worse—at least, that’s what I think.”
“Did he give you a disease?”
I chuckle. “No. Will you stop already? It’s not about Boyles. And I’ve never had sex without protection.”
“That’s right. You’re the responsible one.”
“And remember that.”
She chuckles. “Okay, now I can relax. I mean, the last thing I need is your parents calling my parents and blaming me for getting their sweet little princess knocked up or infected with an STD.”
Her cynicism is more about my parents than me. Londyn and Leo and Xander and Heartly have a strange dynamic. My father and his brother listen to each other and are always on the same page businesswise. But I feel like sometimes they use their children—me, Treasure, Max, and Lynx—as tokens to compete with each other.
I take a deep breath.Here goes nothing.“It’s about the Valentines.”
Treasure’s deathly silence gives me chills.
“Hello? Are you still there?” I ask.
“What about the Valentines?”
I have two options—cut and run by changing the subject or bravely charge onward. I close my eyes. “I, umm… I had sex with…”
“Orion?” She yells in my ear.
My eyes pop open wide. “Orion? No! Hercules.”
Again, she turns silent. This time, I won’t prompt her to speak. I’ll wait patiently until she says something.
“Wow. How the hell did that happen?” she finally asks.
I tell her about going to the restaurant with Eden and how drunk he was when we left together.
“He didn’t recognize me, though.”
“You know the Valentines are off-limits, right?”
My shoulders slump. “I know. Do you know why?”
“Yes, I do.”
Now I buck up. “Could you tell me? Because I don’t understand why my parents and Max freak out at the mention of their name.”
Again, silence.
“Treasure?”
“Well, I really don’t have a clear reason why our parents hit the roof at the mention of the Valentines, but I sort of pieced some things together. It has something to do with bad business between our grandfathers.”
“What kind of bad business?”
“I don’t know, but—”
