Forbidden Attraction (Book 1)✔

♠Chapter 46♠

Hey, hey, hey!

Here's a good 18,500+ words for you, to make up for the last few stressful chapters.

♤♠♤

I stuffed, hopefully, the last bag into the back of my mom's SUV and shook my hands out. Making sure, everything was set, I pushed the button on the elevated door and heard the beeps before it started lowing itself to close.

"Road trip, road trip, road trip." The chant kept going and I smiled before turning around.

"Okay!" mom said loudly, getting all their attention. "These are the rules." A round of protest went erupted and I grinned. They should've known better. This isn't the first time any of them were going anywhere with my mother.

Naturally, I told my friends about my plans to go to New York for the weekend and of course they all wanted to come. But not all of them could. Mostly because they work. I was able to get the weekend off because I didn't take a lot of days off unless it was necessary.

Thion was here because he doesn't work on weekends, which still makes no sense to me. He'll work all hours of the night during the week but never on weekends and somehow he's fine in the mornings.

Jess doesn't work so she's here and according to her, she had nothing better to do. She'd said it as if the trip itself was a nuisance and I'd been begging her to join us. I hadn't. I'd told them what I was doing and they invited themselves.

The other were Nate, Sean, and Carlos. They all took the weekend off. I didn't ask what excuse they gave their employers. I didn't want to know.

The men in our group obviously have zero priorities.

But lastly...

My eyes went to Ari. She had a smile on her lips as she listened to my mom lay down the rules. It might be amusing to her because she'd never had to hear them ten thousand times before each trip me and my friends went on.

Her mom had allowed her to come with us. Mostly because my mother was chaperoning. She'd actually told me that to my face when she came to pick up Ari from school yesterday (whenever she had a day off from work or went home early, she'd pick Ari up from school).

Her hair was out today. Ari's, I mean. A beautiful array of curls and kinks framing her face perfectly.

Of course, she was wearing sweatpants. At least she wasn't wearing a long-sleeved shirt, like usual, but a regular white T-shirt that she'd tied at her hip. Still, it was Friday evening, the sun hadn't even started to set yet, and it was warm out. I don't know what it was about it that made her look as hot as she did right then.

I blinked when I realized I was staring for far too long and looked away the same time her eyes moved to me. I glanced at her again, but when I did, she was looking down at her feet that were in a pair of slides. She was smiling at her brightly-painted red toenails and holding out her hands in her pockets, extending her large sweats.

"You're not staying with us?" I heard Jess ask.

I looked over at my mom.

My mother laughed and I sighed, leaning against the car and shoving my hands in the pockets of my joggers.

"No, we're all staying at my dad's." They turned to me. "She's staying at a hotel."

"I'll stop by," my mom said, then added, "maybe. Now, who's ready to go? We have a few hours to knock off and if any of you have anything you'd like to see before sundown..."