Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I push hard on the doorframe before levering myself up and over in a single leap. There isn’t any roof. This car isn’t crushed. It’s not destroyed. It’s not broken. I’m not broken.
At least not until I catch my foot on the way over because I’m off balance and then land hard on my good shoulder and face.
“Oomph!” Ouch! Ouch, that fucking hurts.
“Darius!”
A shout comes from across the garage. I peel my head up because that voice isn’t manly, so it’s not Hans. It sounds a lot like…oh god, it is. It’s Everleigh, and she’s running across the empty bays, her bare feet slapping on the concrete floors.
She falls to her knees in front of me, her hands at my shoulders, and carefully picks me up as I pick myself up along with her. She doesn’t blurt out a string of questions. Questions about what’s wrong, why I’m on the ground, and why my face is soaking wet—holy shit, it really is soaking wet. Why is it soaking wet? Questions about why my lungs are like balloons, inflating and deflating as I gasp for oxygen. She just sets her warm hands on my shoulders, tucks her fingers into the sleeves of the hoodie she’s wearing—it’s something with some college letters on the front that her mom and sister must have brought her from home because I didn’t supply that in her wardrobe—and mops my face with it. She cleans me up, and shit, there might be blood because I practically hit the concrete face first, and I’m probably going to owe her a new hoodie after this. Then, she wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me into her, which effectively silences the runaway thought train surging off the rails of my brain.
She smells like summer, vanilla, and peace.
“Fuck that car,” she whispers near my ear as her fingers thread through my hair.
“Did you see me faceplant?” I don’t want to ask it because it’s so damn embarrassing. What I do want to do, though, is taste her here, right by her earlobe. I think about how sweet she tasted last night in the kitchen. I don’t taste the fear, panic, or the ashes of my old life anymore. I just taste her. I also can’t smell the metal of blood. I just smell her. Wrapped around me with her sweater that smells like fresh laundry soap and her hair that smells like flowers and pears. My lungs are better, not a rancid nut, but a good nut.
“Yeah, I did. You weren’t in your office, and I found Hans in the hall, and he said to try here. I wanted to talk to you before anyone got up.”
“Awesome. I’ve probably started off the conversation in a great way.”
I pull back and grasp Everleigh’s hands in mine, turning them over to inspect her sweater. No blood. That’s a good sign. My face is throbbing enough that there could have been copious amounts of it.
Her smile is there, wobbly but real, and I can tell she’s nervous. She has something she wants to say. I wonder if she slept at all last night, either, or if she was on fire like I was. I blamed it on my shoulder, but that wasn’t just it at all. I just jacked off in the shower an hour ago, but I’m already rock fucking hard again in slacks and a white dress shirt because that’s what I put on for the day—my home office power attire.
“Here, we’ll start again.” She brushes her sunshine gold hair back over her shoulder and keeps twirling it while she looks at me. “Good morning, Darius. How did you sleep? Bad? Yeah, me too. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I wanted to, uh…not be in my bed. Alone. I had a cold shower this morning, but it didn’t help because no amount of rationalizing my way out of this is working. I know we shouldn’t, and it can’t happen because this isn’t…this isn’t a relationship. It’s a very fragile friendship, and that should be enough for me. It has to be enough. Is our truce still good? Even if you haunt my dreams, I want it to still be good. I mean, still stand. A friendship truce. Because that’s safe, and it makes sense. I think anything else will just lead to confusion and hurt, and blah, blah, blah, complications, blah, blah, blah, bad things. But, that being said, I don’t want you to think I didn’t, uh, that it wasn’t…because it was. I just…this is for the best. I think. I don’t want to hurt you.” She brushes the flat of her hand over my cheek. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. We both got what we needed out of this and an unexpected friendship besides, and I think that’s amazing.”