she’s trying to at least save you a little bit of face.”
My guess was she didn’t know. That was too juicy of a subject to forget to mention like that.
“Or she’s planning to put that particular information into another article,” I grumbled.
“Or that,” she agreed. “I wish that I had a different answer for you. But, since your man is particularly unobservant, or wishes not to think about why he knows you so well as he does, doesn’t mean the rest of the city is that unobservant.” She winced. “But I might’ve blown that little top off when I talked to him at the gym. I mentioned Grandma.”
I shook my head. “I changed my name back, Mavis. My last name now matches yours. There’s no way he never made that connection. I just… we never talked about it. So I never thought it needed to be brought up. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t know.”
After the very publicized trial, I’d gone out of my way to distance myself from the ‘Pope’ name. To the point where I’d legally dropped “Pope” and used my middle name as my last name. It was too freakin’ noticed when we were young. Oh, you’re a Pope? Please, come to the front of the line.
Oh, you’re a Pope? Please, take the beating heart right out of my chest. I don’t think I need it anymore.
Honest to God, it’d been a breath of fresh air for everyone to talk to me, Fran, instead of Francine Pope, the girl that owned half the freakin’ world.
The girl who, with her sister, had lost her parents at a young age, and had practically been raised by her grandmother who fucking hated her guts.
My grandmother was still living and breathing. Still just as much of an asshole as she’d always been.
Still pissed that I would drop the name that she’d worked so hard to build.
What she didn’t know was that it was hard to use that name when you were young. People expected things out of you that you didn’t want to give. And if you didn’t meet their standards? They spread the word that a Pope had failed.
It was exhausting.
At least Francine Pope wasn’t a lie to Taos.
I hadn’t exactly offered up that information—me being filthy rich—but I hadn’t hidden it, either.
I mean, he’d seen the house that I had paid off. He didn’t see me hesitate in buying whatever I wanted. And who the hell could buy five-hundred-dollar shoes like I’d bought with him and not blink unless it was someone that had the money to spend?
Sure, I had a shitty car.
But that was just because I didn’t want to hear my grandmother bitch and complain about the car that I chose.
In the end, I was using her own hand-me-down. She couldn’t complain about that if she was the one who originally picked it out.
“I know who she is.”
Mavis and I both shrieked.
My heart literally exploded out of my chest at the unexpected arrival of Taos.
By the time I realized that I wasn’t about to be assaulted, I was on the floor with my hands covering my head.
“Well, that was fucking stupid,” Mavis snarled at Taos.
“Shit,” Taos whispered.
I felt his hands then prying me off the ground and tucking me into his arms.
I couldn’t stop the shivers that rocked through my body.
There were just too many things going wrong lately for me to be nonchalant about the unexpected arrival of a man in my house that’d been locked.
Still knowing it was him should’ve been a relief to my hyperaware nerves.
It wasn’t.
Not yet, anyway.
The shock and the adrenaline that’d mainlined through my system was still holding control of me.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He rocked me.
I heard Vlad shriek again and then Mavis say, “I’m sorry, buddy. I gotta get you a new spoon.”
That was because I was holding the other one in a closed fist and pressing it into my hair.
Even the thought of having to wash my hair again wasn’t enough for me to let it go.
I didn’t know how long either of us sat there. Him wrapped around me. Me pressed into his body heat, shaking and, later I’d come to find out, crying.
It had to be at least twenty minutes because, when I finally came to—panic attacks blew—it was to find the kitchen significantly darker, Vlad no longer in the room, and my sister glaring daggers at Taos who was quietly talking to her in reply to something she must’ve said or asked.
I let