Chapter 7
Lara
“I guess you’re going to be my new best friend, now that we’ve lost our best friends to each other,” I said to Parker, a huge smile on my face.
The smile was there to hide the fact that what I really wanted to do was pull him up and out of his seat, drag him over to me and ask him what it was that he didn’t like about me.
Why didn’t he like me? Why didn’t he love me?
Why didn’t he want to date me? How could he bring up things he was going to tell or not tell my future husband, while I was here hoping he would tell me he wanted to be my future husband?
My heart felt frozen and I knew the smile on my face was fake as hell.
I’d thought the breakfast was going well.
Shit, he’d been flirting with me. He’d talked about an orgasm, for heaven’s sake.
An orgasm! Who did that if they didn’t like someone?
I almost felt like he was playing with me.
Testing me to see how I’d react. I wanted to shake him.
I wanted to tell him he couldn’t do this to me.
He couldn’t make me think he was interested in one breath and then push me back to the ground in the next.
“Lara and Parker, best friends forever.”
I said the words like I was some little kid on the playground.
I wasn’t even sure where they’d come from.
Was I showing all my cards too soon? Was he going to think I was some sort of weirdo?
I knew as soon as the words were out of my mouth that I’d made a mistake.
A big, stupid mistake. A mistake that could cost me all the peace of mind I had left.
Yet, a part of me didn’t care. If I was going with this plan, I might as well just go with it and see what would happen.
“Yeah.” He nodded and smiled back at me.
“I guess you’re my best buddy now.” He slapped his hand down on top of my hand and I almost jumped at the contact.
My heart started thudding erratically at the feel of his warm, strong hand on mine, and I could feel my body growing warm.
“You going to be my wingwoman as well, then?” he said with another huge grin, and my stomach dropped almost immediately.
“Sure,” I said, my heart both breaking and rejoicing at the same time.
The feel of his hand next to mine was amazing, made me feel alive, but the pain that was striking through my entire existence at his asking me to be his wingwoman was almost excruciating.
How could he be thinking of other women in this moment?
Couldn’t he feel our connection? How could I be the only one seeing this?
Just being around him gave me energy and life, yet he didn’t seem to be affected by me at all.
I blinked up at him then and I wondered to myself if I was going crazy.
If I had somehow let some alien into my life.
How could I be so attached and attuned to him?
How could I be feeling all these emotions?
So many ups and downs and he—he just seemed to be feeling nothing.
It made absolutely no sense to me. Absolutely no sense at all.