Page 93 of Priceless
Being noticed was different.
One of her friends who overheard stepped up next to her and looked at me. She didn’t have nearly the same joyous, happy look as her friend. “Why are you here?”
Isolde took the question for me with a laugh and jerked her thumb over her shoulder at Cream Dream. “We love the waffles, same as you, it seems.”
The girl frowned, flipping her gaze between me and the store behind me. “Don’t you think you should skip it?”
Rin’s head snapped over so fast I thought she might break her neck. She stepped in front of me, but she didn’t even get anything out before the first girl’s mouth dropped in shock. “Connie, what the fuck?”
“What? You said it yourself. She just married some of the hottest Alphas on the planet. Seems like she’s the only one getting the good part of the deal.”
My friends and girl number one weren’t the only ones staring at her in horror. The entire group looked at their friend like she just grew a second head.
“Listen,” Trinity said, stepping forward. “First?—”
I put a hand on her arm and shook my head. “It’s not worth it, Rin. This is probably how it’s going to be now.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m going to sit by and take it. Neither should you.”
Smiling sadly, I just shrugged. “If I fought every person who thought that, I’d never get anything done.”
The new phone Everett ordered for me arrived this morning. Before they left for work, they sat in the kitchen with me, on the phone with a new public relations woman, Clara, they hired specifically for me. We made new, safer passwords for my accounts that only the five of us would have, and she would do the work of cleaning up the spaces we had control over.
I hadn’t thought it was worth the effort, but one look from Everett made me think otherwise. After that, we turned off my notifications, and an invisible weight slid off my shoulders. Until that moment, it hadn’t struck me just how heavy that weight was.
It was going to happen. I couldn’t stop that unless I became an entirely different person, and that, I couldn’t do. My whole life had been a parade of diets and trying to fight my body’s inclination to be large. I was healthy. Healthier than plenty of people in my life. My body was just big, and a few years ago I finally stopped doing things that were only going to make me miserable and focused on only that: my health. If that was okay, then I could make peace with the rest of it.
Or at least, I could try. I wasn’t quite there yet.
The first girl who approached me looked at her friend with a face full of disgust. “Yeah, that’s not okay. Find your own way home. You’re not riding in my car if you’re going to get that attitude all over my leather seats.”
The incredulous expression on Connie’s face was priceless. “You’re going to strand me here because I’m telling the truth?”
If it’s the truth, then why did they marry me in the first place? I wanted to ask out loud, but I didn’t. Over the last few days they’d drummed it into me enough. They wanted me. It didn’t mean they wanted me forever, but they did want me. They chose me.
“No.” The girl snorted. “I’m stranding you ‘cause you’re a bitch, and I’m not going to be friends with someone like that.” She came to me and smiled. “I’m sorry about that. I thought your wedding photos were beautiful, and I hope you guys are really happy.”
“Thank you.”
She glanced at Connie one last time as she returned to the group of women. “Bye, bitch.”
I almost felt bad for the way Connie wilted as the people who had been her friends left.
Almost.
The line moved forward again, and even though there were more curious glances toward us, it didn’t spiral out of control. Thankfully.
“Look at that. I didn’t even have to get my hands dirty,” Trinity said.
“It’s good to know not everyone thinks they’re slumming it with me,” I whispered.
Isolde looped her arm through mine. “I would say the majority don’t. The assholes just have a bad habit of being the loudest people in the room.”
“Truth,” Rin said. “There are half a dozen examples I could give you from work alone.”
“Everything okay, princess?”
That voice didn’t belong to my Alpha. It belonged to Isolde’s Beta, Cade, who frankly should be an Alpha with the presence he had. The two of us shared a look at the nickname. Now that I understood what it meant to be called that, her blush made total sense.
