Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
“You’re not. You’re experienced. Mature. Not old.”
“It’s over,” he snaps, leaning forward, glaring at me. I never thought Jacob Jennings would be so readable to me, but he is here. He wants to touch me again, to kiss me, to grab me, but he’s shutting it all down. He’s forcing himself to be cold.
“Over,” he repeats. “It has to be. Understand?”
“You’re lying,” I whisper. “You don’t want this to end any more than I do.”
“Are you trying to break your dad’s heart?” he growls. “If he ever found out, it would ruin him. You have to let me be strong.”
Now he’s got the desperate note in his voice when he says I need to let him be strong. He’s pleading with me huskily, his big, strong hand trembling as if he’s struggling to hold himself back and contain all the lust. I feel the same, the feelings bursting out of me.
“It would break his heart,” I whisper, and I finally see it. How immature I’ve been. How manipulative. How unfair. It crashes into me as the snow begins to fall, coming down in wild swirls. “You’re right. I just… I never thought it would happen, but it did.”
“It would shatter him,” Jacob says, “but you don’t need to cry. This was my fault. I’m the one who kissed you, stripped you, spanked you…”
I wipe at my cheeks, embarrassment stinging my cheeks. “I must seem so immature to you.”
“Not much more immature than me,” he says darkly, “but we can do the right thing now. It’ll be tough, but we can put this behind us and pretend it never happened. We have to try.”
“We can do it,” I say with no conviction in my voice. “I know we can.”
“We have to,” he says, sounding as unsure as I do. “The alternative is going in there and telling him what happened—telling him what I did. If we keep this up, I’ll have to do that. Maybe now we can bury it.”
“What about after this?” I ask.
“Never, Emma—”
“No, I mean…” I continue, ignoring the hurt in my soul at his stiff refusal. He’s doing the right thing. “You said you were trying to get yourself killed because you were so guilty. When this is over, will you go back to that?”
He stands up, shouldering his rifle. “I’m going to scout the perimeter.”
He walks away, never looking back. I stare at his broad shoulders, his tense, angry gait, his posture ready for war. I wipe my cheeks again, confused heat clashing with the pain of the betrayal. Dad’s always been there for and supported me, but I did it again the first chance I got. I put on a sexy outfit and seduced my dream man. I have to stop. I have to be better. I have to pretend I don’t have feelings for Jacob, and I never have.
Going into the house, I grab my Kindle, open the thriller I was reading, try to throw myself into the story, and force my spirit to bleed into the electronic pages so I don’t have to be me. I hear Dad’s voice raised from next door, but it goes quiet again. It’s too muffled to make out the words. He’s probably taking a business call, having no idea what his best friend and I have just done and no idea that I want to do it again… and again and again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MIKE
Ilower my voice, leaning over the laptop to get closer to the mic. Vanessa, my ex-wife, looks at me from her sunny, airy kitchen. She’s got her hair in rollers as she slices some fruit. She’s got a look on her face that instantly puts me on edge. It’s like she’s waiting to panic. I told her that once—“It’s like you’re waiting for a catastrophe that’ll never come”—but it didn’t go well.
“It’s just a trip with a family friend,” I say.
She tsk-tsks, shaking her head. “You still should’ve told me.”
“Ness, you know she’s nineteen, right?”
“Please, don’t call me that.”
I roll my eyes. “Vanessa, she’s nineteen. She’s free to go wherever she wants.”
“She’ll always be my little girl, and where are you, Maine? In some cabin? Doing what? Just sitting around the place?”
“Relaxing, enjoying the scenery.”
“I just wish you’d told me—”
“That’s what this call is for,” I cut in.
“In advance,” she goes on.
“It was a sort of last-minute decision, a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
Vanessa frowns at the camera, leaving me no guesses about her feelings. She was never a spur-of-the-moment kind of person.
“You said that Jacob is there?”
“Yep.”
“Just the three of you?”
“Yes.”
“Is that appropriate?”
It takes me a second to work out what she’s hinting at. She stopped chopping and moved the laptop so she could grimace into the camera. Grimacing was always her specialty. I can tell she’s just looking for a reason to be pissed.
“Oh, come on, Ne… Vanessa.”