“Osama,” she turned to him with a pleasant smile. “Marry me?”
The bastard laughed. “My mom would kill me if I married a white girl.”
“Well then, I guess that’s that.” She looked at Osama with kindness. “Thank you for your time, Osama.”
Then scowled when turned to me. “And yours, Mr. Hayes.”
She sauntered over to the door when my tongue twisted into a hurricane. Spilling fucking bullshit. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”
Her back turned rigid, niveous, and aerated.
“Christian,” Osama warned.
“You haven’t moved on from the past. From us.” Ignoring Osama, I moved towards her. “And it scares you. Why, sweet Adelaide? Are you afraid of falling in love with me again?”
She whipped her head around. Blazing. Fiery.Hot.
“I have no reason to be afraid where you’re concerned.”
“Then why not say yes?”
“Because I don’t trust you.”
Ouch.
“Then marry me and let me show you all the ways you could trust me.”
A ripple of unease cascaded down my spine when she didn’t respond. Agree to this, Adelaide. Agree tome.
I’d never felt as desperate as I did now. She stood with all her goodness, not changing a single bit—and suddenly my heart wanted to be tied to hers—real or unreal, it didn’t know the fucking difference.
“What do you get out of this?” She said quietly, staring into space. “It doesn’t make sense why you’d want to help me.”
Because it’s you.
“I want company shares.”
Her shoulders slumped. “You want to be a member of the board.”
“Exactly.”
She turned back around, this time making it a point to look back as she pushed open the door. Wind blew in, exposing all of her features to me. “If I was anyone else, I might have said yes.” she whispered. “But I’m me and I truly want nothing to do with you.”
It took a lot of effort to make me speechless.
But Adelaide did ittwicein one day.
There’sone important fact to note about Osama. When he wasn’t being Moonshine’s hacker, he was acting like an eleven-year-old boy going through the heightened stages of puberty. Minus the porn addiction.
Osama’s house was a massive three-story mansion that was decorated from top to bottom, and take this in, each room had a theme. Nothing was left untouched by his cheesy taste. From games to books, the man had everything down.
Psychology would say he was lonely and decorated as a form of therapy.
I called it pure fucking crazy.
We sat on large bean bag chairs, LED lights colouring the room from top to bottom, with our takeout dinner discarded in front of us. Osama yelled at a thirteen-year-old boy through his gaming console.
I checked the time on my watch.
