Falling Into Love with You (The Hate-Love Duet Book 2) Rowe, Lauren (read aloud TXT) 📖

the past behind us and then turn around and invite Charlie to the house, and Mimi didn’t punch a hole in the wall, after promising she wouldn’t.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m not doing it for you.”

“Any drop of happiness you bring to my grandmother is a huge gift to me. So, thank you.” With that, I unmute the call with my cousin. “Sorry about that. Laila and I will be landing around five tomorrow. I’ll text you when we’re driving to the house.”

“Perfect. See you soon.”

“Oh, hey. I ordered a bunch of groceries to be delivered to the house tomorrow morning—everything for Mimi’s famous raviolis. I thought Mimi could show Laila and me how an expert makes pasta from scratch tomorrow.”

Sasha pauses, ever so briefly. But it’s long enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“What?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high about Mimi cooking with you during your visit, Ady. Mimi’s been really tired lately.”

My breathing catches. “I’ll make sure Mimi gets plenty of rest, I promise. But I have to see her cooking like a boss in that huge gourmet kitchen.”

Sasha smiles thinly, but says nothing.

I take a shallow breath. “Okay, well. Gotta go. See you tomorrow.”

“Sleep tight and travel safe,” Sasha says. “Is Laila there?”

“Right here.”

I shift the camera to capture Laila and she waves.

“I can’t wait to see you in person,” Sasha says.

“Same here,” Laila replies. “Thank you for taking such good care of Mimi.”

“Thank you for taking such good care of Adrian.”

“Okay, bye now,” I say, abruptly shifting the camera back to myself. “Love you, Sash.”

I hang up the call, feeling physically ill. If I hadn’t messed up today, that call would have been one of the most exciting of my life. If I hadn’t messed up, I’d be on the cusp of taking a girl home to meet my family, for the first time in my life. For real. And, man, I would have been excited about that. Proud to show Laila off, as my gorgeous, talented, brilliant girlfriend. As it is, however, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, it seems like we’re hanging on by the barest of threads, if at all.

Our SUV reaches the iron gate in front of our reality TV mansion and our driver punches in the code—and when we roll into our driveway, we see a car already parked in front of the house.

“Fuck,” I say, suddenly remembering. “Fish and Alessandra. We’re writing our sappy love song tonight, remember?”

“Fuck,” Laila replies. She shakes her head. “Well, all I can say is thank God for Fish and Alessandra. Because as hard as it’s been to write a song about our ‘undying love’ the past few weeks, it’d be fucking impossible now.”

Twenty-Two

Laila

When Savage and I enter our large kitchen, Fish and Alessandra are already there, seated on stools at the island while our private chef prepares something on the stove.

Savage and I greet Fish and Alessandra and the chef. We thank our friends for coming here to save our asses and chat about today’s long shoot, since three out of four of us were there. And through it all, I can’t bring myself to look at Savage, even once.

After some more small talk, we sit down at the kitchen table and eat the meal our chef has prepared. As we eat, I keep catching Savage staring at me, his eyes begging for forgiveness. And I must admit, despite everything, my anger thaws a bit every time I look into his dark, tormented eyes. My solution? I try to avoid looking into Savage’s eyes, as much as possible. However much living with Savage in this TV mansion has made me swoon, today made me realize there’s too much baggage between us, too much jealousy and hypocrisy and popcorn lies, for us to move forward together, as a real couple, outside of this carefully curated bubble. Which means I’d better get my heart extricated now from this situation, before it’s too late.

After our meal ends, our foursome heads into the living room to get to work, with Savage and Fish grabbing acoustic guitars, Alessandra taking an armchair with her laptop, and me taking a seat behind the baby grand.

“Okay,” Fish says on an exhale, tuning the guitar in his lap. “Reed said this song should be a ‘classic love song.’ He said he wants it ‘sweet and romantic.’”

“Pure, gooey goodness,” Alessandra chimes in.

Fish looks at Savage and me. “Is that your understanding, too?”

“Yep,” Savage says.

“Cool,” Fish replies. “Let’s write a hit love song, guys.”

“Thank God you and Alessandra came over to help us out,” I say. “Left to our own devices, Savage and I couldn’t write ‘pure, gooey goodness’ to save our lives.”

Savage looks like I’ve slapped him in the face. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” he mutters, and I quickly look away from his pained expression.

“It shouldn’t be too hard for the four of us geniuses to write something, on-brand, if we put our heads together,” Fish says. And Alessandra concurs. But when the pair looks at Savage and me for confirmation . . . they get crickets. Nothing. In fact, with each passing second of silence, the air in the room is becoming increasingly thick and stilted.

Alessandra clears her throat. “So, have you two worked up any ideas to get us started, or . . . ?”

“We’ve got nothing,” I reply, letting my eyes return to Savage’s. And when the words leave my lips, he physically winces in reply, like I’ve lashed him with a whip. Crap. Maybe that was a bit harsh of me. My heart aching, I peel my eyes off Savage’s tormented face and return to Fish and Alessandra. “We’ve tried to write this song, over and over again. But everything we’ve come up with has been all wrong. Way too intense and passionate and angsty for the assignment.”

“I think a little angst would be okay, here and there,” Alessandra says.

“Yeah, well, angst is all we’ve got, unfortunately.”

Alessandra looks at