Three Little Words by Lauren Hawkeye Read Free Book Online Page B

her.”
                The big man grinned, rubbing a hand over his stubble. Shaking his head, he reached out and thumped me on the shoulder, knocking me back a step.
                “You poor fucker. Cavanaugh paid me the next month’s rent and hightailed it out of here three days ago. Left most of her furniture and shit behind, but said she ain’t coming back.” He studied me, that metallic tooth glinting. “Forgot to tell the boyfriend, huh? You’re better off. Girl like that’s too wild for a pretty boy like you.”
                I nodded stiffly as I walked back down the hall, trying to process what the big man had just told me. I should have been pissed at yet another person commenting on how wrong Adele and I were for one another, but my attention was caught on what he’d told me right before that.
                My mind rejected it. I didn’t want to believe it. But I knew he was telling methe truth.
                Adele was gone.

 
 Chapter Four-Present Day
 
 MAL
 
                I lugged the last moving box into the tiny apartment and straightened, stretching out the aching muscles that I’d used and abused all day. I looked around my new home as I tried to ease a particularly nasty knot that had formed at the base of my neck.
                “What a fucking dump.”
                My words didn’t hold much heat, both because I was too tired after hauling my shit around all day, and also because while the place was indeed a dump, I wasn’t all that upset to be living there.
                After two years at an Ivy League school across the country, I’d never thought I would wind up back here, in the town where I’d done my undergrad work.
                But this summer I’d finally managed to find the balls to do what I’d been trying to do my entire life. I’d told my dad to fuck off and let me lead my own life.
                He’d responded by cutting off my cash flow.
                I didn’t much care that I was now dirt poor, living on the tight budget provided by my student loans. I was still in law, because I’d realized that that was what I’d truly wanted to study, but now it was on my terms.
                I was free .
                Grinning, I headed to the ancient fridge in what was possibly the ugliest kitchen I’d ever seen. I’d shoved a six pack of Bud in before I’d even started unloading my stuff from my truck, and now I cracked open one of the icy cold cans and chugged half of the beer in one swallow.
                There wasn’t much besides the beer in the fridge, even though the new roomie had been in residence for a few days. I opened the freezer—no food there, either, just a cracked ice cube tray and a frosty bottle of vodka.
                I shook my head, not overly surprised. We’d kept in touch over the past two years, and though I hadn’t seen him in person since the night I’d found out Adele had left, and didn’t know much about his day to day life, he didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would stand at the stove wearing an apron and cook me spaghetti with meatballs for supper.
                I suspected we’d be eating a lot of Chinese takeout. Or ramen noodles, since I was poor and Dorian shoved all his extra cash into equipment for his band.
                The fact that the apartment was in the building where Adele Cavanaugh and I had fucked like bunnies years ago was something I was trying not to think about. Even the shadow of the glittery frame that had once adorned her door was gone, as if she’d never existed at all.
                Maybe she hadn’t. To get on with my life, I’d sure as hell tried to convince myself of that.
                I finished my beer, something in my gut twisting uncomfortably at the mere thought of