Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3), Kristen Ashley [reading eggs books txt] 📗

declared, “I feel like a steak. Do you feel like a steak?”

“Who doesn’t feel like eating a steak?” I asked.

“Atta girl,” he muttered.

His driver glided from the curb.

And call me crazy (and I’d be the first person to do that), but when we did, I thought for the first time in a long time that things were looking up.

“At dinner, we’ll talk about you wastin’ your time in that studio. And we’ll talk you into spendin’ time that you don’t waste in that studio. Got a coupla folks I know who own galleries. Your shit is good. Time to stop fuckin’ around with that and let the world know you got talent.”

My lungs seized.

Brett called out to the driver. “Call ahead. We’re not waiting for a table.”

Okay, maybe I was wrong about things looking up.

But for the life of me, even after what he’d just said about my studio and knowing people who own galleries, I felt I was right.

CHAPTER TWO

I Blew It

HATTIE

Sitting in my Nissan Rogue outside the studio the next morning, I again scrolled through my texts from last night.

Lottie:

Where are you?

Pepper:

Are you coming?

Ryn:

Girl. You are missing out!

Elvira’s boards are EVERYTHING!

Evie:

OK. Now you’re worrying me.

Strike that, you’ve been worrying

me. Now you’re SERIOUSLY

worrying me.

My reply, copied and pasted to each of them:

Something came up! I’m SO

sorry! I hate to miss it!

Have SO MUCH fun!

xo♥♥♥

I knew I needed to give it a minute (or a hundred hours of professionally directed time while sitting on someone’s couch) to try and figure out why I was so terrified of spending time with them again after what Axl and Ryn saw when I was dancing.

I had just, until then, refused to give it that minute.

But sitting in my burgundy Rogue, giving it that minute, I realized it wasn’t just because it was embarrassing.

It was because it was weak.

See, Lottie had it together. She totally knew who she was and she made no apologies (not that there were any to be made, she was awesome, still, she was a stripper, and before that she’d been Queen of the Corvette Calendar, and by my estimation, 99.9 percent of the population was judgy, so they’d think she had apologies to make).

She loved stripping, made a ton of money doing it and was at one with her looks and her body. She also had a great house she’d pulled together herself, as well as the love and devotion of Mo, who might look terrifying in a could-be-one-of-Brett’s-henchmen type of way, but he was a softie.

And Evie was a genius. Like, certifiable. I’d seen her do mathematics on the fly in her head that I’d probably mess up on a calculator. Her family was way more messed up than my dad. But she’d scraped them off and moved on, going back to college to get her degree, fixing computers, living with, looking for a new house to share and now engaged to Mag, who was a super-cool dude and insanely into her.

Then there was Ryn, who had it just as together as Lottie. She was gorgeous and sexy and sweet and strong with a fantastic fashion sense and she’d just sold her first flip, a house she’d worked on herself. Now she and Boone were in the midst of waiting to close on their second because that was what Ryn wanted to do full time. Flip houses. And with Ryn as she was, I knew that would happen.

Last, there was Pepper, who had a daughter, Juno. And Pepper was the best mom in the world with Juno being the best kid ever, even if Pepper had zero support from her family and her ex was a total tool. Motherhood seemed effortless to her. No one messed with her or her kid, not even her family …or her tool of an ex.

Then there was me.

And I was none of that.

But seriously, it was embarrassing, dancing free and breezy by myself in a room then screwing it up and losing it the way I did. Doing all this not knowing Ryn and Axl were watching.

No, not embarrassing.

Mortifying.

I mean, on the whole I was shy around good-looking guys.

Very few weren’t.

But the one who saw me do that? The one Lottie had picked for me, tried to set us up, he’d asked me out, and I’d wanted to go, but I refused? That one saw me do it?

Forget about it.

And now …

I didn’t know.

They were good people. Good friends.

We’d been kidnapped together!

But what did I say?

When they were so together and didn’t let anyone shit on them, how did I explain why I continued to take care of my dad?

Especially when they knew it was him. They knew it was my dad who was the reason Ryn and Axl saw me self-harm.

And how did I share what I’d never shared? That I rented studio space, and worked on pieces, but never even attempted to show one, much less sell one?

Bottom line, how did I tell four totally together women who had been in my life for a good while, who all counted me as friend, that I had not let them into my life hardly at all?

Do unto others, right?

And I thought, if I cared about someone, gave them my time, and they didn’t let me in, how would I feel?

Not good.

Of course, I could just let them in.

But the longer I left it, the harder that became.

And now …was now.

I’d blown off Lottie’s pre-bachelorette party to go out to dinner with a (probable) felon.

And none of them had texted again after my text.

I wasn’t sure I could come back from that.

The only thing I was sure of was that, right then, I was going to head into my studio. I hadn’t been there in at least a week.

And maybe, what it used to be able to do—give me focus, calm, and an outlet to express things I didn’t even admit to myself—it would do again.

Not to mention, Brett had told me last night over steaks that he’d had a