***
In high school, Savannah Sunday was voted Most Likely to Succeed, Best Looking Girl, and Most Intelligent, and according to the internet, she’s continued to live up to those honors: same curly blond hair, big blue eyes, bright smile, a Harvard Law degree, and a job at one of the most high profile entertainment law offices in Atlanta. We’d been pretty inseparable when we were teenagers, and even during college, though I stayed in town and went to Georgia State so I could keep working at Dad’s auto shop and Savannah took off to the University of Texas. But we kept in touch regularly. I knew all about the Texas oil heir who looked like a real cowboy but could only come if she tickled his balls during sex. She knew about the blind date I went on sophomore year, only to find out the guy was my third cousin. I was the first person she called when she got into Harvard. She was the first person I called when Dad had his heart attack.
But the last couple years we’ve drifted apart. While I was in Europe, I was pretty MIA, I know. So I hope it won’t be weird to call and ask her to fill me in on Ryder Cole. Jamie may think the way to get out of whatever he’s gotten himself into is to run away—believe me, I know the feeling—but the miscalculation he’s made is that he’s not only left Ryder behind. He’s left me, too, right in the middle of it.
I think I owe it to myself, if nothing else, to find out more about this guy. Learn what I can about what he’s hiding underneath that blue suit, other than just the tattoos that peeked out of the bottom of his shirtsleeves last night.
I can’t help but imagine how far up the ink goes, sprawling over his biceps and around his triceps, which were rock hard as they brushed against my own, cascading over his wide shoulders, the design maybe teasing over his firm pecs, out of plain sight, only visible if he’s entirely shirtless.
If I’m in a situation in which Ryder Cole is entirely shirtless, I have a feeling I’d be in even more trouble than Jamie is now.
Though it might be the good kind of trouble.
I rock back and forth in the swing while I dial Savannah’s number from her law firm website, pushing off the cement slab gently with my toes, the sun going down over the horizon behind the trees. I know it’s probably too late for her to be at the office, but I figure I’ll leave a message and maybe send her an email, too. Get the ball rolling on finding out who exactly Ryder Cole is other than just a greedy bully with a sexy smile that probably always gets him everything he wants.
And everyone.
The phone rings four times, and then I hear a voice that I didn’t even realize how much I’d missed. Except it’s not a voice mail recording.
“Savannah Sunday’s office.”
“Savannah?” I say.
“Speaking.”
“Hey, it’s me,” I say, shocked not to be leaving a message. It’s nearly eight o’clock at night, but I guess being successful is a twenty-four-hours-a-day kind of job. “It’s Cassie.”
“Cassie Fucking McEntire,” she says, and I can practically hear her smile. “Holy shit. Is it really you?”
“It really is,” I say. Savannah always had that pretty-girl-with-a-dirty-mouth thing down to a tee. It’s part of what I love about her: she is who she is, and yet she’s not who you might expect when you see her.
“What time is it in England? It must be, like, the middle of the night.”
“Actually, I’m in Atlanta. I came home yesterday.”
“Is Sebastian with you?” she says.
I plant my feet on the patio floor, stopping the swing, my chest heavy at the sound of his name, those snake-hiss S’s coiling around my heart, squeezing. It’d been more than a day since I’d said it or heard it, not on TV or standing in line somewhere or even in my dreams.
I take a deep breath. “Nope, it’s just me,” I say, trying to work up a smile she can hear through the phone, too. “Hope that’s okay.”
“It’s fucking fantastic,” Savannah says. “God, how long’s it been, Cass?”
“Years,” I say. “I think I still had bangs.”
“Jesus, you changed your hair without calling me?” she says. “And I thought we were friends.”
“I can always grow them back,” I laugh.
“Your face is too good to hide.”
“Oh, you say that to all the girls,” I say, tucking my long hair behind my ear. I let my fingers trail up over my brow bone, lingering for a second over the scar from last New Year’s Eve when my heels and alcohol intake were both too high for me to brace myself against the wall. The cut has healed so imperceptibly that I imagine the only people who would ever even know what happened when we got home that night are Sebastian and me. And maybe I’m the only one who would remember how it happened.
“Nope, just you,” she says. “I’m a high-powered attorney now. You have to pay me by the hour for that kind of charm these days.”
“Like a hooker?” I tease.