Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
He didn’t even flinch.
Did he always sleep that soundly?
Was it the adrenaline or exhaustion?
Or was it something else? The sleep of a kid who finally, fucking finally, had a safe space?
I understood that feeling all too well. I wasn’t sure I even realized how sleep-deprived I’d been my whole childhood until I moved out at eighteen and had several locked doors between me and anyone who wanted to hurt me.
More than anything, that was why I let the kid sleep. All through that morning as I went over his cleaning with a fine-tooth-comb, never truly satisfied if I wasn’t in control of a situation. Then part of the afternoon as I packed up my blood-free clothes to toss, showered, and tried to catch some sleep, but found my mind wandering back to the woods, to Dav, and all those sticky, complicated feelings I was trying to avoid around him.
It was a door slam coming from across the hall that finally had him jerking upright on the couch, sleepy eyes wide, his hair all mussed.
“You’re alright,” I said over the mug of my coffee. “Just the neighbor,” I added as he focused on me, confused for a moment, before it all came rushing back. “Thanks for cleaning, kid. I don’t think my floors have ever been this clean.”
“Didn’t know it was white linoleum under all that dirt,” he teased, making my lips curve up as he sat off the side of the couch.
“Want coffee? Fair warning, everyone thinks I make it too strong.”
“No such thing,” he said, folding his blanket and draping it over the back of the couch before coming and taking a cup from me, then going for the canister of sugar that sat unused most of the time since I liked my coffee bitter enough to start a rock band.
“Well, no, not when you put a cup of fucking sugar in it,” I said as I watched him pile it in, stir, and take a greedy sip.
“What time is it?”
“Two. In the afternoon. You missed school.”
He shrugged that off. “I never cut. It’s fine.”
Of course he didn’t. School was a place away from his asshole parents.
“Hungry?” I asked. “I was thinking of ordering.”
With that, I had a ton of shit delivered, and we sat on the couch eating while talking about the night before, about how he didn’t have to worry about the body, that it was handled, that he was best to just forget there ever was a body.
And it was all very… comfortable.
Which was weird as fuck, considering I never had someone else in my apartment. Maybe the abused kid in me just recognized it in him or something like that.
“I liked that guy,” Joel said as we sat back on the couch, watching the idiots on the remodeling show rip out a bunch of original woodwork and stained glass.
“What guy?” I asked. I felt his gaze on my profile, his brow raised.
“Oh, right. Dav. Yeah.”
“He likes you,” Joel said.
“Oh, what do you know? You’re ten.”
“Fifteen,” he said, doing that chest-puff thing again.
“Same difference,” I said just to annoy him.
“He does, though,” Joel said, shrugging, not knowing when to shut up. “Like you. Why’s he not here?”
“Because it’s not like that.”
“He wants it to be.”
“Dude, how could you possibly know that? You’ve probably never even talked to a girl.”
He didn’t take the bait, though, shrugging it off.
“He looks at you like Spike looked at Buffy.”
“That reference is… way too old for you,” I said.
“It’s true, though,” he said.
“I’ve never watched Buffy,” I admitted. “Had my hands full with real-life monsters growing up. Hey, don’t turn that off before I can rant and rave about how ugly the final renovation is,” I grumbled as he reached for the remote.
“You don’t have streaming?” he asked, shooting me a disgusted look.
“I don’t watch much TV.”
“I’ll scam you a free week of the one that Buffy is streaming on.”
“Scam me a free week?”
“Yeah. I just make a bunch of new email addresses, use a Visa gift card with next to nothing left in it, then sign up for a free week, and cancel it before it tries to charge me. Rinse, repeat.”
“Or you could, you know, use my credit card,” I said, giving him a small smile as I got up to hand him my wallet. “Sign me up. I’m making more coffee.”
We sat on the couch for the next few hours, watching the grainy first season of the show about slayers and vampires and witty sidekicks.
“So… Spike…” I said when by the fifth episode, he still hadn’t appeared.
“You have to be patient. The look isn’t until like season five or six.”
“Five or six?” I snorted.
“Don’t try to act like you don’t like it.”
“I don’t… dislike it,” I started. I mean, badass girls who kick ass, what’s not to love? “But that’s a big commitment just to prove a point.”