Billion Reasons Why

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

 

I had never seen Alexander Hale in person—or the other Hale, as I’d been referring to him in my mind.

Blaine was standing up beside the bed, holding out his hand for me to get up. Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop my stomach from tying into knots and my heart from pounding erratically in my chest. The day that I’d been supposed to meet him, Blaine’s step-sister had caused that scene that made me run off.

Now Alexander Hale was waiting in the living room. It wasn’t a big deal. Wrong. It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But it was. Alexander was the heir to half of the Hale Empire. He was Blaine’s only brother and someone he really looked up to.

Even though their father was still alive, it was a little obvious that Alexander was the man of the house in the family. Not that Blaine was a weakling that didn’t make his own decisions—that was far from the case. I still knew that Alexander’s approval of me would be extremely important to Blaine, and that was what scared me.

So far I had met one person from the family—Justine. It had gone far from well. I was scared of a repeat.

“It’ll be fine. Alex will love you,” Blaine said, helping me up from the bed. It was mainly because I was reluctant to get up.

“What if you go and talk to him. I’m kind of tired,” I told him, yawning for extra show.

Blaine cocked an eyebrow, and shook his head. “Come on. I’ll introduce you and then you can come back to bed.”

“Blaine…”

“Madeline…” Blaine said, using my same tone. It earned him an eye roll.

“We can do something after Alex leaves—watch a movie or go out to dinner.”

“I’m pretty sure we could do those things even if I don’t leave the room.”

“I’m willing to compromise,” he finally said, trying to convince me.

“Compromise?” I giggled.

“If you come out, you can stay here for the rest of the week,” he said.

This made me laugh hard. “Sure, Blaine, you’ll let me.”

“So it’s settled then,” he said, as if I hadn’t been talking sarcastically.

“No, nothing is settled. I don’t want to leave the room. Why don’t you go talk to him, see what he wants, and then we can do something,” I suggested.

“You don’t want to meet my family?” Blaine asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You know it’s not that. Your brother… he’s just…”

“What?”

“I’m not even dressed up,” I told him, looking down at what I was wearing. I hadn’t really thought about how I was dressed until the words had slipped out of my mouth, but now I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“You look fine,” Blaine said, giving me a flat look.

“Just fine…?”  I didn’t mean to sound so disappointed. Blaine was smiling, though.

He leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Madeline,” he said in a low voice, placing a kiss just below my earlobe.

“Huh?” I asked. His proximity and his breath tickling my neck was enough to make a shiver run down my body.

“You would look perfect in rags. You look perfect now, okay?” He placed his hands on either side of my neck, and pulled away enough to look down at me, his grayish, blue eyes soft as he stared at me.