Page 45 of Praised
“Rose wasn’t wrong that he deserves better than me,” I admitted. “But I’m not the worst he could do.”
“Howdidyou get around that, by the way? I’m dying to know.”
“I was honest with him.” I drank some wine and let the rich floral taste roll around my mouth before I swallowed. “I told him I didn’t need to change, that I could give him everything he wanted.”
“If what he wants is orgasms and bland home furnishings.”
I had half a mind to throw the contents of my glass right onto Dalton’s very overpriced white t-shirt. But I put it to better use, taking another drink instead.
“I was honest,” I explained. “About what I wanted and what I could give, and that seemed to be enough.”
“For now.”
“Thanks for your vote of confidence.”
Dalton breathed out a laugh and shrugged his shoulders on a long inhale.“You’ve never been the kind of man to take no for an answer. I didn’t expect you to start now.”
“None of us like being told no,” I said.
“Guilty as charged.” Dalton set his wine on the table next to the bottle and rubbed his hands down the front of his jeans. “Just be careful.”
“What?” I angled my face toward him, caught off-guard by the change of tone and the worry in his voice.
“Just be careful,” he said again. “We don’t like to be told no and all of us have a habit of doing everything we can to turn a no into a yes.”
“That’s called being a skilled negotiator,” I countered.
He gave me a stern look that made me feel like there was a lot more to the story than he was letting on.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
But I didn’t.
I really didn’t know at all.
CHAPTER16
ROSE
My Thursday nightshift was absolutely dreadful. It was slow and the customers I had weren’t tipping, and by the time the dinner “rush” passed, I was ready to call it quits. The week had been relatively anti-climactic after I settled down Drake’s frantic Saturday afternoon phone call, and I’d chatted here and there with Flynn, but we hadn’t made any solid plans to see each other. I’d spent my down time with Drake and eating packaged ramen.
It was normal.
It was all the things I did with my time before I met Flynn, but somehow they felt boring and dullafterhim. Not like his house had much to offer besides a pool—which I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since I’d seen it. I worried I was more fascinated by him, and I had way too much downtime since I’d seen him last to think about the implications of that.
Thinking about Flynn made my chest feel light, but it was impossible to not remember the tragic line fromEver Aftergoing on about birds and fishes and where they would live. I couldn’t have met a man any more different than myself when I’d met Flynn. He had to know I wasn’t as well off as him, I didn’t think many people were, but I also didn’t think he understood just how broad of a gap there was between our tax brackets.
There were some things in life that were conquerable, but the longer I stewed over Flynn and his cheekbones and his shitty furniture and his expensive car and his stupid house, the more I understood what I needed to do.
I had to break things off with him.
It didn’t matter that he was sure that I deserved him. He was right about that. Ididdeserve a man like Flynn, and I deserved the kind of life his money could offer, but this wasn’t a dream world. This was the real world where boyfriends told you they loved you and then fucked their roommates behind your back. This was the real world where the novelty of a man with less money and nicer underwear wore off sooner rather than later.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened my messages, sending one to Flynn.
Me: Can we talk?
He didn’t reply right away.
