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 want to grasp her hand and brush kisses over her knuckles. I want to turn her hand over and inhale at her pulse point, inhale her skin and the clean, fresh scent of her. To suckle her finger into my mouth. I want to fold her under me and strip off those jeans she’s wearing, wrap her legs around my waist right here on the garage floor, and sink into her warm heat while she moans and writhes and cries against me because it’s good. So fucking good.
“My feelings aren’t hurt. I understand.”
“Do you?” She’s so solemn, so worried. She bites her lip a little, and my eyes are drawn there. I can’t help but think about kissing her again. Instead, I kissed the concrete earlier, and that’s the only action my lips are going to be getting.
I’m used to keeping my shit to myself or Hans because I trust him, and when one does things like shave a person and follow them around like a shadow, they become quite endeared, but I find myself saying something. Saying words that make it through the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears. Words that sound like, “I’m worried I’ll never find love unless I buy it.”
Yup, I must have said it out loud, and it must have been what I think it was because Everleigh gets this look on her face like that jar of peanut butter from last night turned out to be rancid when we opened it, and she got the first sniff. Rancid PB is seriously gross.
Everleigh tilts my chin up, her forehead creased with worry lines, and her eyes burning clear through me. “Darius, you won’t ever have to buy love. You…anyone would like you. You’re a fantastic person.”
“But most people won’t see past the money, the big, slightly creepy house, the private jet, the fact that I walk everywhere, and my fucked up arm. It’s just fucking hopeless.”
“Are you lonely?” Everleigh’s face is so kind that I can barely look at her because it makes my chest hurt.
Yes, I’m lonely. I was lonely for her before I even met her. I was lonely for her when she went to Philly to see her family, and I was loneliest for her last night without her in my bed. “Was it bad last night and the friend zone I don’t want to jeopardize what we found truce is code for I suck?”
“No.” She strokes my cheek. “No, it’s not code for that. Believe me, I’d really like to kiss you right now.”
“After you just saw me freak out and face plant?”
“Especially after that. I bought the car for me, and I should never have asked you to sit in it. This isn’t helping. If you want, I can try to help you find something that does, though. You don’t have to force yourself to go through this. It’s terrible.”
“And you still want to kiss me even after knowing all the other stuff?”
“Yeah. I wanted to kiss you last night. And I still want to kiss you now.” She hesitates. “Maybe- let’s just stick to our truce. Just friends, okay? This is hard enough as it is. But after the six months is over, well, who knows? If we still feel the same way, maybe we can go on some dates then.”
My heart leaps and pulses and pounds and sings, even if six months from now is a really long time. Alright, so it’s more like five and a half, but even just a few hours without Everleigh is torture. Regardless, she’s giving me hope. I can respect what she’s saying, and I can understand the logic in it. She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before. I didn’t really know how lonely I was until she came into the house, and my usual bubble of solitude was shattered. It should be annoying. But she’s not. I should find her to be nothing more than a complication in my life. But she’s not, and I don’t. I shouldn’t want her the way I wanted her all night. But I do.
“In Philly or in Chicago?”
She laughs, and her nostrils flare in the cutest way. She backs up a pace, which is gut-wrenching because I miss her closeness. I miss the way she looks at me like I’m more than just Mr. Money Bags Galore Times a Thousand. Like I’m more than a tragedy because that’s the way most people who knew me before look at me now. But Ev? Sure, she looks at me like I’m rich, but she also knows my shoulder sucks, and my head is a bit of a mess, and she still wants to know me anyway.
She still likes me anyway.
“I have to warn you. Before I came out here, I heard my mom and Heather talking in the guest room. They were both already up, and the cat was screeching in there. When I say talking, I mean they were actually hotly debating about what to do, given that it shredded every set of drapes in the room, the covers on the bed, and also took a rather suspect-looking crap on the rug.”