“For me,” I said. “I think I might’ve been planning to fight him.”
Will choked—probably on a cup of tea—and I pulled the phone away from my ear, wincing.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “That sounds right.”
I pushed myself up, grabbed my laptop off the dresser, and flipped it open, pulling up my messages with one eye half closed. Just like I’d expected, I found a string of texts to my pilot, Adam. They were mostly incoherent, though. “Shit, I tried messaging Adam.”
“Oh, great. What did Adam have to say about that?” Will asked, sounding like he already knew the answer.
I scrolled to the last message in the thread, sent from the pilot to me early this morning. “He reminded me to drink a Liquid IV.”
“That’s solid advice.” He paused for a beat. “What made you get this shitfaced? You’ve been pretty chill since you went back to Chicago and took over my life for me.”
He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t drink like this anymore. I wasn’t quite as respectable as Alex would like, but I wasn’t a train wreck either.
“Why did Dad and Zach sign an NDA at the direction of the Morris family?” I asked suddenly, finally remembering where it had all begun.
Will fell into a stunned sort of silence.
“What is it, Will?”
There was muffled movement at his end, like he’d turned away, followed by a quiet murmur, Eliza, probably, and then a door closing.So he wants privacy for this. Even from her. That’s not encouraging.
“How do you know about that?” he asked a moment later.
I scoffed. “Why am I always the last to know everything?” It took exactly one second before I backtracked, already knowing why I was constantly left out. I’d left myself out for a few years. “Never mind. Scratch that,” I muttered. “I already know.”
I’d gone out on my own, not caring at the time that it had meant being left out of the loop. In fact, I’d desperately wanted out of said loop. No matter how much I regretted it now, I couldn’t exactly blame them for not having told me when I hadn’t wanted to be told.
“Adeline’s marriage was arranged as a union of business and convenience,” he said. “Her family does things a lot like ours, so you know how it goes. Preserving the family legacy. All that fun stuff.”
“Yeah.”
“Zach wasn’t about it,” he said. “Not at all, actually.”
“Of course, he wasn’t. God, she was his girlfriend at the time. Where did the NDA—” Before I could even finish the question,my phone buzzed in my hand with another incoming call. Alex this time.
I groaned. “I’ve got to go. I think Big Brother’s spidey senses are tingling.”
“Drink water,” Will said. “Eat some carbs.”
“Don’t tell me how to live my life.”
He laughed. “Clearly, someone should. Good luck with Alex.”
“Thanks. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it.” I pulled the phone away from my ear to take the other call, launching into it without preamble. “What did I do wrong this time?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Nothing that I know of. Have you done something that Ishouldknow about?”
“Never. What’s up?”
“You have a dinner tonight,” he said. “Be at Tranquille at seven.”
“Tranquille, as in, the fancy, standing-reservations-only place you keep dragging Zach to? He hates it there, by the way. You should buy the kid a burger sometime.”
“That kid is only three years younger than you,” he said dismissively. “Thankfully, it’s not Zach you’re meeting there tonight anyway. It’s Jordan Stone.”
“A girl Jordan or a boy Jordan?”