Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
I didn’t know he could smile like that, with his eyes crinkling around the edges and his mouth crooked and charming.
Jesus, I wish I still didn’t know he could smile like that.
“What are you guys doing here?” Bailey asks, trying to get herself together.
“We have, um…” How do I say it? I have to fulfill my contract as a high-end prostitute tonight. “I wanted to come see you before I have to go to work tonight.” I can’t look her in her eyes. I don’t want her to know what exactly that work entails. “How did things go today?”
Ben tells me about his science project for the fair next week and runs to his room to get it. Liam takes a seat at the very edge of our couch. He’s so big in comparison to the dilapidated thing that he looks as if he’s going to fall straight to the floor, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.
Where is the aloof, cool demeanor? Where’s the scorn and anger I’ve come to expect? This guy seems almost… nice.
“It was a good day,” Bailey says. “I got my first ‘A’ in geometry, but don’t get your hopes up because I’m sure it was a total fluke,” she mutters.
“God, geometry,” Liam mutters, shaking his head. Bailey flushes beet red.
“Good job,” I tell her. I look back to Liam. “Um, is what I’m wearing okay for tonight?”
“Why wouldn’t it be okay to tend bar?” Bailey asks, confused.
Liam smiles. “Fine, Cora,” and somehow the deep, steady timbre of his voice settles my fraught nerves, but I can read that wolfish grin of his.
It doesn’t matter what you wear. It’s coming off.
Ben comes back into the room with a contraption I haven’t seen before, with a penny and wires and a potato and lightbulb. I have some vague recollection of a similar science experiment in my grade school years, but I know nothing about Ben doing a project, and a little part of me is sad that I didn’t even help him with this. I look to Bailey, who notes the question in my eyes and nods. She helped him with it and hell, I didn’t even know he was doing it. I swallow back the tears that threaten to blur my vision.
I can’t help this. I’m not out partying with friends and neglecting my brother and sister. Hell, I’m barely taking care of myself. I’m trying to keep us together with what little I’ve got, trying to keep us from falling apart.
I have to.
I walk to the kitchen to cook them some food, opening the cabinets, when Bailey reminds me, “Hey, um, remember you said you were ordering pizza tonight?” When Liam looks up at her she flushes nearly purple, puts her head down, and joins me in the kitchen.
“Oh, right. Pizza,” I said.
“You can’t let Ben down. He’s been dying for real pizza,” she says.
“Of course not,” I say. I pick up my phone, but I’m flustered, and my fingers won’t work quite right. I’m not really sure why. It isn’t just Liam sitting in this room, and my fraught nerves at letting him down. It isn’t just the run-in with my landlady, or the discussion with Giada, or all the unanswered questions Bailey will have for me that I don’t really know the answer to. It isn’t the essay I need written by Friday or the exam coming up. Or hell, the punishment I’ve got coming tonight at Verge, and whatever Liam decides to do to me when he has me alone.
It’s everything.
“But it doesn’t exactly work the way it’s supposed to,” Ben is saying, frowning. “And I don’t really know why.”
“I know why,” Liam says, but instead of taking it out of Ben’s hands and fixing it, he looks at Ben and asks politely, “May I show you?”
Ben’s eyes light up.
“Just let me order the pizza first, okay?” Liam asks.
I swallow hard.
Don’t be nice to them. Please, don’t be nice to them.
“Cora,” Bailey whispers. “Who is this guy? What the hell have you been hiding from me?”
Liam asks Ben what kind of pizza he likes, and Bailey and I give him our requests. When he puts the phone up to his ear to order, Bailey hisses in my ear.
“Where the hell did you find that god of a man, who is he, and, I repeat, what exactly are you hiding from me?”
“Bailey,” I hiss back. It’s so not cool my kid sister’s calling him a god of a man.
“Cora,” she responds.
Jesus.
“His name is Liam,” I tell her, which only earns me an eye roll and she smacks my arm playfully.
“I got that part, sis.”
“I met him at the coffee shop,” I tell her in a whisper. “And we’re sort of dating.”
“Sort of?” She gives me an I wasn’t born yesterday kinda look.
“Okay, so I’m not really sure what we’re doing.”