Bad Romance by Jen McLaughlin

Author:Jen McLaughlin [McLaughlin, Jen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, New Adult
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Lilly

The next morning, I pulled the covers over my head to shut out the sunlight illuminating my room. All night long, I tossed and turned, and my mind hadn’t shut off even for one second. I was going on two nights without a wink of sleep, and my brain felt sluggish and fogged up. All I could think and feel was Jackson, and all the orgasms he had given me, but now he wanted me to pretend it never happened.

Not freaking likely.

He might be experienced enough to put the past behind him, but I sure as hell wasn’t. I had had one actual sexual encounter—one—in my entire life, and it was with him. There was no way I could just shove his memory to the back of my mind behind the others, because there were no other memories. It was just him. And me. Naked.

That was it.

I closed my eyes, trying to forget about our fight, or how disappointed he seemed when I defended marrying Derek. But the thing was, I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew if I ended up marrying him, that it was never going to be some fairy-tale marriage, no matter how it looked from the outside.

But it didn’t matter.

If I didn’t find a way that could save Daddy’s company, and Derek’s, without the marriage, then I would do it. I might not want to, but I would. It was my happiness versus thousands of other people’s happiness—and there was no way I could win that battle.

If I didn’t marry Derek because I didn’t want to be tied down to someone I didn’t love, our fathers’ companies would fail. Companies that employed thousands of people. Those thousands of people had families. Kids. Parents. Spouses. All those people would be left without jobs and money and food on their tables because…what?

Because I couldn’t suck it up and marry a man who was a dick on a good day?

All because I wanted another orgasm?

I wasn’t that selfish, and I refused to let our employees down. If push came to shove, and there was no other way to save the companies, then I would do it. I’d bite the bullet and marry him. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one. That was that. Derek and I had grown up together; he’d been my escort to my sweet sixteen and our senior prom. Our parents had naturally hoped we’d unite the families at some vague point in the future, but when the companies started to flounder, vagueness became certainty.

Did it mean I was happy with that decision? That I didn’t wish that there was a way I could take control of my fate and still save the company, without having to marry Derek? Of course. That was what I was trying to do, while pretending to be a good little girl who would do as told. When I’d started to get restless as the future, and my eventual marriage, loomed ever closer, I’d sneakily visited a lawyer two towns over.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.