Color Me Pretty: A Father's Best Friend Romance

Taking a hesitant step toward her, I took a deep breath and added, “It’s okay to admit. It doesn’t make you weak, I promise. People will probably say it does, but you just need to surround yourself with people who will support you instead.”

I swore I was getting to her when I saw her eyes soften. Then, at the last second, her jaw ticked, and she scoffed. Scoffed like she had the day I walked away from her at her place when I wouldn’t join them. The day she’d giv

en me what she was after. How could I have forgotten I’d had it? It wasn’t like she’d given me counterfeit money. I had drugs in my purse. Drugs that I kept because I thought she’d been right at one time. I believed I’d needed that escape, that possibility of what she said it could do for my weight and energy.

How stupid was I?

She stood, pushing herself up from the counter and shaking her head adamantly. “I’m not asking for me. If you care as much as you pretend to, then listen to me. I want to help.”

“And I want to help you—”

“Samantha’s father is after you!” Her rushed words caught more than just my attention. A few people sitting around us looked our way with drawn brows.

“What?”

“Samantha’s dad, Richard Pratt.” She stepped toward me again, but I didn’t move this time. “I messed up. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I can’t fix it if you don’t give it back.”

Samantha’s dad? Wasn’t that who Theo had warned me about before? He hadn’t liked any of the girls or their families, but he warned me with a conviction that was beyond riches and selfishness. He knew something that he wasn’t telling me, and Kat knew too.

“What is he trying to do?”

I could tell how badly she pleaded for me to listen, but I needed something. Handing over what she wanted could end just as badly as not. Where would that leave me? Us? “You need to tell me something that would make me believe you’re not just asking for…” I gestured toward my bag, hoping the prying eyes didn’t know what was going on.

The bartender was watching us a little too carefully in between customers, and I wanted to move the conversation somewhere else but needed the comfort of a public place for protection. I wished I hadn’t felt that tinge of panic in my gut, the mistrust, but it was going to save me in the long run from people like Kat.

What she said was something I hadn’t expected, hadn’t anticipated at all. “Everybody knows that you and Theodore West are each other’s weaknesses. You love each other, Della. Richard Pratt wants to exploit that like he’s done before.”

I stared.

Unblinking.

Unbreathing.

“You love him,” she stated. There was no question, no doubt in her thickened words. “He loves you too. Sam’s dad uses people’s love for those they care about against them. He’ll do it to you too.”

I swallowed. “You don’t know that.” I hadn’t been talking about Sam’s father.

To my surprise, she knew that and smiled. It was sad and distant but knowing. “But you do.”

Closing my eyes, I counted to three and inhaled slowly. The thump thump thump of my heart was hard and heavy in my chest, echoing throughout my body as I reached for my bag and unzipped the top to dig out what she wanted. When I looked at her again, she’d stepped toward me, taking my hand like two friends comforting each other. That wasn’t why she did it. The small baggy disappeared from my palm and into hers, her hand dropping back to her body mere seconds after getting what she wanted.

“I do,” I told her thickly, staring at the floor. Theo hadn’t told me he loved me, but I knew it. It was because I loved him that I couldn’t fight her on this anymore. For once, I was choosing to fight my own battles. I was choosing myself.

I chose him.

“Get help, Kat.” That was the last thing I told her before walking out of Divers, calling Dallas, and waiting at my apartment for the person I’ve loved forever.

Theo.

Chapter Nineteen

Theo

Dallas was quiet when I opened the back door of the sleek, black tinted car and slid onto the cool leather seat. The subtle clearing of his throat over the air conditioner blowing had me eyeing him in the rearview. “What?”

“Della met with Katrina Murphy today.”

Jaw hardening, I straightened in the seat, forgoing the seatbelt. “When was that?”