Chapter 67

Jerome

IT TOOK me a minute to figure out what emotion gripped my heart in a vise. I already shut the car off after parking in front of Lily’s plant shop, but I couldn’t make myself open the door to get out. Eventually, I realized I was nervous.

Fucking nervous.

The whole idea confused the hell out of me because I hadn’t been nervous since my exam to become a real estate broker. Taking the exam was a rite of passage for every Kensington.

And then it wasn’t so much nerves as excitement to get the task over with and carry on in life. Now, however, it felt like I was going to throw up and pass out.

When you grow up a Kensington, you didn’t have much room for self-doubt or a lack of self-esteem. Lily liked me. That was clear, so the freakout had to be about something else. Maybe I was having a heart attack? But that made no sense because I worked out an hour a day five days a week and was practically in my prime. I wouldn’t hit thirty for another 318 days—not that I was counting.