Page 48 of With This Kiss
My phone buzzed. I picked it up and looked down at the message.
Reign:Hang out with me this weekend.
Me:All weekend?
All weekend? That would be too much of Reign—too much of his mouth, his cocky little smirk that sometimes made me want to punch him in the face, and an entire weekend of trying to dodge his wandering hands.
Yeah, that didn’t sound fun at all.
Reign:I’m heading out to the cabin with my friends. Come. It’ll be fun.
His friends?
Was I ready to meet his friends?
I didn’t even realize we were at that stage.
If I were meeting his friends, did he expect to meet mine?
A pang hit my heart, and I dropped the phone down on the table.
What friends?
Before, I would say I had Preston and Etta.
There were also people I hung out with sometimes, but I wouldn’t say we were close. They were mostly people I had met in college, and they were mostly Etta’s friends.
I hadn’t contacted anyone since her death.
I didn’t want to contact anyone.
And Preston… things were awkward between us. He was expecting something from me that I couldn’t give. How would he feel if I introduced him to Reign?
Besides, it wouldn’t take him long to put two and two together.
Yeah, it was best if I didn’t introduce Reign to Preston.
I looked down at the table.
Etta had been the one connection I had to everyone else who wasn’t my family.
And I hadn’t cared about that. Still didn’t because she was the only one I truly cared about, and now she was gone, and it felt like an impossible feat just to keep going.
I picked up the phone and looked down at Reign’s text again.
Me:Pick me up tomorrow morning then.
He texted back right away with a “Perfect.”
Before I could respond, they called my name for the food.
I stood up, grabbed it from the girl at the register, and walked out of there, heading back to my apartment to eat my meal alone.
12
REIGN
Early Saturday morning, I headed to her apartment.
