Four Letter Word

Explanations were in order. This was the boldest move I had ever made in all of my twenty-four years, aside from getting married straight out of high school.

I never visited Tori without planning out my trip, and she always knew about it well in advance.

This wasn’t simply a visit, though. This was a permanent relocation.

But explanations could wait. I had to deal with something, or someone, to be specific, before I revealed anything.

I pushed past her and entered the house.

“No, he’s not. And he won’t be joining me either. I hope that offer you made me last year still stands. I know you were just joking about us ditching our men and starting a lesbian life together, but as long as we keep it purely platonic, I could swing it.”

I tossed my bag on the couch in the large sitting room and spun to face a very, very confused-looking Tori.

Rightfully so.

She tilted her head, motioning around the room as if the house, and not the woman standing in front of her, had just magically appeared.

“What’s going on here? What are you doing?”

“I need that asshole’s number. Let me handle this first, and then I’ll explain everything. I promise.” I tugged my phone out of my back pocket. My hand shook ever so slightly. “What is it?”

She slowly inched closer.

“Who? Wes? Why? You’re not going to call him, are you?”

“Tori,” I growled. “Give. Me. His. Number.”

My words, and the tone behind them, acted like a fire lit to blaze under her ass. She gasped, then moved with purpose through the tiny but lavish beach house.

Tori came from money. Her family came from money. You didn’t live this close to the water and in digs like this without either having connections or a stacked bank account.

“Okayyy.” She spoke with uncertainty, her tongue clinging to the word as she walked back into the room. “Okay, um, seriously, I have no clue what’s going on right now, but I’m almost afraid you might choke me if I don’t do what you say. You’re a bit scary right now, Syd.”

If I’d had it in me, I would’ve smiled at that.

But I didn’t have it in me to smile.

Tori dug the heel of her hand into her eye while her other scrolled through the contacts on her phone.

Her long blond hair was haphazardly pulled back into a loose pony, with several pieces falling onto her shoulders and curling there.

She looked unkempt and exhausted, but still unbelievably gorgeous, because she always looked unbelievably gorgeous no matter how unkempt or exhausted she was.

Tori was a natural stunner and the definition of small-town beauty queen. She grew up in the pageant circuit, won every competition she ever entered without even caring enough about them to try, it was all her mother’s doing, putting her in those pageants and exploiting her daughter’s beauty, and Tori went through the motions to make her mother happy, but that didn’t mean Tori didn’t know when to put her foot down and that occurred when she was approached by some agency to do shampoo commercials when she was fourteen.

My best friend wasn’t interested in the kind of attention appearing in a shampoo commercial would bring a fourteen-year-old who had developed a lot earlier than the rest of her peers.

So that offer was the end of Tori’s pageant days and, subsequently, the beginning of her mother’s descent into the world of plastic surgery.

If her daughter wasn’t going to bring her attention, Mrs. Rivera would find her own way to grab it.

I watched another strand of hair fall out of Tori’s messy yet still utterly perfect pony.

I imagined after she destroyed God knows how many breakables in the house, she probably tossed about in her bed, praying for sleep and dreams involving Wes’s unfortunate but highly deserved demise.

Bastard.

Keeping her eyes on her phone, Tori shook her head then finally spoke.

“He probably won’t answer you. That’s his thing. But whatever. Ready? It’s 919-555-6871.”

I opened up the keypad on my phone and moved my thumb furiously over the numbers.

He would answer. I’d hit Redial until my fingers bled if needed.

I placed the phone to my ear and waited.

I felt anxious and slightly dizzy. My pulse was racing. I knew I probably needed to sit down, take a breath, but the second that motherfucker’s deep voice seeped into my ear with a tired yet undeniably sexy “yeah,” which pissed me off to no end seeing as I hated this man with every fiber of my being and had no business thinking his “yeahs” were sexy, I was on high alert and once again found myself pacing the room like a strung-out junkie.

“You,” I growled, voice vibrating low and sore in my throat. “Stupid, worthless piece of dog shit.”

Tori gasped behind me.

“Excuse me?” Wes sounded put off. “What the fuck—”

“Who the hell do you think you are, huh? And in what universe is a douche bag tool like you able to bag a wife? Is she also a fucking idiot?”

I heard his heavy breathing on the other line, but nothing else. His silence boiled my blood.

“Hello! Remove the dildo from your mouth and fucking speak!”

I spun around, shocked at my own coarse words, and looked up at Tori, curious to see her reaction.

She stood frozen between the couch and the wall, her eyes swollen and red from her earlier tears, doubled in size now that I’d let my mouth loose on this dipshit.

A light, amused chuckle hissed in my ear.