Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Eyelashes, that were somewhere between blond and brown, fell over those baby blue eyes. “No,” he pretty much whispered in what sounded like disbelief. Maybe even shock.
I nodded back at him, serious as a heart attack.
Those eyes moved over my face again right before he lifted one of those big, big hands—I tried not to think about how I’d thought he had the biggest hands and feet I’d ever seen back when I’d been younger—and he gently set the tip of his index finger right beside the corner of my mouth. Literally maybe two millimeters away. Right over the beauty mark there that I had hated when I’d been younger. I’d tried covering it up with my aunts’ and Connie’s makeup at least a dozen times.
Zac’s finger stayed right there as his gaze flicked back to mine and my old friend asked, still basically whispering in a stunned drawl, “Peewee?”
Oh.
He really hadn’t known it was me?
Warmth filled my chest—relief, it was relief, just a little bit of it; I could admit it—as I gave him another little smile, a hesitant one if I was going to be honest with myself. “Yep” was all I gave him, mostly because it was all I could. Okay, all I would.
Zachary James Travis’s—professional quarterback and my old friend—mouth fell right open, showing me all those white, perfect teeth before the hand he had beside my lip fell away, and the next thing I knew, he was shaking his head and stating loudly, definitely freaking surprised, “You’re shittin’ me.”
I shook my head in return.
Apparently that response was all he needed, because before I could do or say anything else, Zac took a step forward and, in the blink of a freaking eye, that six-foot-three body was there. Right in my face.
Right in my face and then lifting me up into a hug that had my toes leaving the ground in the time it took me to blink as he said, loud and in what really did seem like he was overwhelmed, “I can’t believe it,” as he hugged me so tightly to him, to that big, hard frame, so close.
A few years ago, that would have instantly eased most of the tension in my body.
He did remember me.
He was happy to see me.
And I wasn’t going to cry because he hadn’t totally forgotten me. Or that he wasn’t all blasé about seeing me after so long either. I wasn’t.
But I didn’t totally relax. Because it had been almost a decade, and because even though I understood that he was busy and had hundreds of people who wanted something from him, it didn’t erase the hurt from before. It didn’t wipe out the memories of staring at my phone and wondering what I had done wrong to make him not want to be my friend after so long.
I wasn’t scraps. I had a life too. A life I had worked my ass off for. I had people who cared and loved me for a reason, because I’d earned it. I thought I was a decent person, most of the time.
And regardless of all that, ignoring the fine fracture of pain I still felt, I still loved him. Not for a second had I ever not wanted the best for him. There hadn’t been a moment in my life that I hadn’t rooted for him despite him outgrowing me and then leaving me in the past.
He was happy to see me right then, and I’d take it.
I lifted my arms and wrapped them around his neck and hugged that long body back, tightly for all of a second, like I had missed the hell out of him. Because I had. Just for a moment, I pressed my forehead against a spot along his warm, smooth neck.
There was no harm in that. I used to hug the shit out of him all the time.
I wasn’t going to think about why we hadn’t seen each other in so long. I wasn’t going to be sad that it might be another ten years before we saw each other again after this. At least I wouldn’t be sad for one more minute.
After this hug and after what I needed to do, life could go back to normal.
“I can’t believe it’s you, Peewee,” Zac Travis pretty much whispered with that still surprised voice, the Texas accent he’d inherited from spending so much time with his Paw-Paw, thick and sweet. He held me so tight and high, I could barely touch the ground. And I’d be a goddamn liar if I said I didn’t notice how hard and muscular his chest felt pressed up against me.
One of those long arms loosened, and what had to be his palm cupped the back of my head in a gesture that surprised me even more as his rich and familiar laughter filled the ear closest to his mouth. “I cannot fuckin’ believe it.”