Make Me (Broke and Beautiful #3)(31)

“What does normal mean? Some people would say a twenty-four-year-old virgin isn’t normal.” For a moment, he swore she was going to kiss him. Her lips were less than an inch from his, her eyelids at half-mast. He would have let her, too. Wouldn’t have had the willpower to stop her. “Whatever you are, Russell. That’s what I want.” His heart was pounding so violently, a response was out of the question. His love would have just poured out like water from a fire hose. He was grateful that she continued, until her words fully registered. “I know you don’t want anything serious, and that’s okay. We were friends before . . .” Her spine straightened in degrees. “ . . . and we’ll be friends after.”





Chapter 11



MAYBE BRAVERY CAME in fragments. Back at the office and in the limousine, she’d had a bright burst of independence. She still couldn’t quite believe what she’d said to Russell. Or what he’d said in response. What was done was done, though. It couldn’t be taken back, and she didn’t want it to be. Rather, she couldn’t wait to assert herself again. Perhaps that explained why she’d feigned sleep promptly after propositioning her best friend and remained that way the duration of the trip. She’d been resting up for more speaking her mind. Right.

Or it might have been an attempt to ignore the phone calls and emails she could already feel clocking in on her phone, vibrating the device in her purse. She didn’t have to check the screen to know it was her mother. Mitchell. But she wasn’t playing ball today.

Abby tugged the key to the estate out of her purse, unable to resist smiling over her friends’ animated chatter as they wheeled their suitcases behind her on the driveway. Most of them were animated, anyway. Russell’s expression was carved from stone as he looked up at the thirty-thousand-square-foot vacation home Abby’s father had bought as a wedding present to her stepmother.

Many of her childhood memories had been formed inside these walls although they weren’t all pleasant. If she could project them against a blank wall, an observer would say the memories were pretty. Beautiful, even. White, billowing curtains. Beautiful women in pastel dresses, their summer tans glowing. Glasses of sparkling, gold liquid being passed around. Drifting piano music. The fragrant smell of the Atlantic lifting the hair from her neck.

Abby pushed open the front door and stepped aside to let everyone pile into the house. Louis threw a laughing Roxy over his shoulder and strode into the white-marble foyer, his expression one of familiarity, since his family’s money was on par with her own. They’d spoken about their summers in Southampton only briefly but had laughed over the fact that they might have been at some of the same parties as children. Honey stepped inside, her jaw dropping. Ben pushed it back up with a single finger and leaned in to kiss the back of her neck. Abby turned to find Russell hovering just outside the door, as if deciding whether or not to come inside.

Unease swarmed in her belly. Russell had never voiced discomfort over her family’s abundance of money, but she’d always sensed it beneath the surface, seen him tense up when someone else picked up the tab at dinner. Now, though, seeing his hesitancy even to step past the threshold, she wondered how deep it ran. Over the last week, she’d started to question just how much Russell kept hidden.

Seeing him so indecisive to take that single step toward her was hard, so Abby turned away and followed her friends into the kitchen. True to form, Louis and Roxy were already taking stock of the liquor in every cabinet, lining the bottles up on the counter. Ben had his arms wrapped around Honey as they stared out at the ocean view.

Their excitement gave Abby a moment to get her bearings. She hadn’t ventured to Southampton since high school for a reason. The time she’d spent here growing up had been lonely. Blending into the colorless walls while parties swirled through the rooms. Not knowing how to include herself in conversations or even feeling interesting enough to do so.

Then “the incident” had taken place.

Something had felt different when she’d woken up that morning. She’d had a dream where she’d run screaming down the pristine Southampton beach, everyone staring at her and whispering behind their hands. She’d twirled and twirled and kicked up sand, not caring a single bit. Enjoying their criticism and that of her parents. When she woke from the vivid dream, her pulse had still been racing with the thrill. She hadn’t wanted to let go, wanted to hold on as long as possible. If she called the image of rebellious Abby to mind, she found she could breathe in the giant mausoleum of a house.

So when her stepmother demanded she attend a stuffy, all-adult luncheon at the local country club—an activity where she would be prodded about her future, her weight, her clothing—she’d nearly broken out in hives. Her stepmother’s face when she said no was still perfectly detailed in her mind. And how it had looked afterward, when Abby started flinging breakfast plates across the kitchen, crushing china beneath her sensible ballet flats, shouting in a voice she couldn’t recognize, but it had felt so good.

Until the following morning, when she’d woken to find her parents gone. A vacation from their vacation, which she’d known meant they’d needed a break from her. It was that morning she realized how easily people left. Summer-camp friends, classmates, parents. Once you cracked and revealed a nonfunctioning part, they bailed.

Days had passed during those summers where she hadn’t been required to speak a single word. Silence had been a running theme that followed her into adulthood. Until recently. No more, though. When she spoke now, her friends listened. Her mother. Russell. She wasn’t that shy, awkward girl who’d learned to keep her opinion or any form of protest to herself. This weekend, she would replace the beige memories inside these walls with ones she could be proud of.