Free Starstruck - Book Four by Gemma Brooks Page B

“He
always manages to tell me what I want to hear, and I go running back to him
every time. I didn’t give him the chance this time. I just hung up on him.”
     
    Alec pursed his lips and breathed loudly through his nose.
He felt sorry for me. Anyone else would’ve known better than to get involved
with someone like Hudson, but not the poor little naïve country girl from Iowa.
He probably saw this whole mess coming from a mile away.
     
    “What am I supposed to do?” I asked him. “I don’t want to go
back home. But I can’t stay here either.”
     
    “And why can’t you stay here?” he asked. To him, L.A. was
the center of the universe.
     
    “I can’t afford to live here,” I huffed. “I don’t have a
single penny to my name. Hudson pays for everything.”
     
    Alec pursed his lips again and looked deep in thought.
     
    “You can stay with me for a little bit until you get on your
feet,” he offered after much deliberation.
     
    It was as the sun had just broken through the clouds, and I
realized that things didn’t have to be so shitty. Nice people did exist, and
Alec was one of them.
     
    “Are you serious?” I asked him. “You don’t have to do that
for me.”
     
    “I want to,” he said. “Besides, I was thinking of hiring an
assistant.”
     
    “An assistant?” I asked. “But I don’t know anything about
styling people.”
     
    “Brynn, give yourself a little more credit,” he laughed.
“You’ve come a long way, and there’s so much more I can teach you. In the
meantime, you can sort of be my gopher. Steam clothes. Make appointments.
Accompany me to job sites. Be my little bitch.”
     
    I smiled for the first time all afternoon.
     
    “I don’t pay much,” he said. “We’ll start you off at forty.”
     
    “Forty?” I asked.
     
    “Forty thousand. A year,” he said.
     
    “F-forty thousand dollars?” I asked, unsure if I’d heard him
right.
     
    “Yeah,” he said. “Wish I could give you more than that.”
     
    “No, no,” I said. “That’s perfectly fine.”
     
    His salary offer was a far cry from the three bucks an hour
plus tips I used to make back home.
     
    “I don’t have benefits,” he said. “Or paid time off.”
     
    “That’s fine,” I said, still in shock from his salary offer.
     
    “Brynn,” he said as he locked eyes with me. “We’re friends.
Don’t make me regret this.”
     
    “Never,” I said as I threw my arms around him and gave him
the biggest bear hug.
     
    Moving on without Hudson was going to be hard, but for the
first time in my life I was going to have a real career. I could make something
of myself. I vowed to myself never to become dependent on a man ever again. For
anything. I never wanted to feel that way again.
     
    “Your phone’s ringing,” Alec pointed to my bag. I must have
tuned out the vibrating as I was lost in thought.
     
    I reached in and pulled out the shiny, glass phone. It was
Hudson.
     
    “It’s Hudson,” I said, shooting Alec a look of annoyance. I
pressed the “ignore” button and threw the phone back in my purse.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 15
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Reality smacked me on the face the moment I woke up Tuesday
morning. With a headache reminding me that Alec and I had drank too much the
night before and a crick in my neck from passing out on the sofa, I knew my
life had officially veered in a completely different direction from just
twenty-four hours ago.
     
    My stomach growled, but I was too afraid to go ransacking
Alec’s cabinets for something to eat. We were good friends, but we weren’t that
close. It didn’t seem right, and the last thing I wanted to do was be that
annoying house guest who makes themselves too much at home. He was the only
thing I had in that town. I didn’t want to go wearing out my welcome quite yet.
     
    I ventured out past the sliding glass doors that led to his
little five by seven balcony. Below the jarring symphony of traffic