Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 97882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
For either of us.
“Would you please just… sit down?” Mary pleaded. I’d put her on edge since I’d barged through the door. “Here, hit the bowl.”
She offered the glass pipe packed with marijuana to me, but I shook my head and looked across the street again. “Bad idea. Especially right now.”
“It would take the edge off.”
“It’s that edge that’ll keep me alive when he comes over here ready to fight,” I told her. Then I cursed and shook my head. “God, how could we be so stupid? We knew better. We knew he was inside. Why did we think we were so fucking sneaky that he wouldn’t see us both walk out?”
“That boy has fried your brain,” Mary mused, sparking her lighter and hitting the bowl. Smoke rolled out of her lips as she added, “I tried to tell you to stay away from that house.”
“Not helping,” I told her.
She shrugged. “I’m not trying to help. Maybe it’s a good thing this happened.”
“What the hell, Mary?”
“Look — that whole team is trouble. What did you honestly think was going to happen? Holden Moore is about to be drafted into the NFL. He’s going to have pussy coming at him from every direction.”
“He doesn’t care about that.”
“Like hell he doesn’t. He’s a man.” She laughed. “And I hate to break this to you, but before you showed up? Holden Moore had plenty of tail. He had a new girl in his bed every other week. I’m not denying that you two had fun while he was here, but did you ever stop to think that maybe you were a conquest for him?”
I stopped pacing.
“He couldn’t have you. He was told from the start that he couldn’t. But he went after you anyway, relentlessly. Who’s to say that come the end of the year, he wouldn’t just mark you off his to-do list and move on to the next in the league?”
“You don’t know anything about him if you think that is even a remote possibility.” I shook my head, even as my anxiety latched onto what she said like a life raft. Holden and I hadn’t talked about what comes next — mostly because we’d been too focused on keeping whatever we did have going on a secret. “Why do you hate them all so much, anyway? What happened with Leo?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She waved me off, and then sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t know Holden, and maybe I am judging him too harshly. But I also think you have been floating on a cloud and ignoring any and all risk ever since you two stopped playing games and gave into each other. You dropped your guard completely.”
I couldn’t argue that, and before I even had the chance to process what she was saying, our front door flew open, and my father blew in like a storm.
He looked at me, slammed the door behind him, then looked at Mary.
“Nice to see you, Mr. Lee,” she muttered, and then she hopped off the couch. “I’m just gonna…” She pointed at the stairs, then gave me a sympathetic look and bolted up them.
My heart was in my throat when I looked back at my father.
He pointed to the couch, telling me to sit without verbalizing, and then he took my place pacing the living room — though he was slower, his breathing more controlled than mine. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I knew without looking that it was Holden. Everything in me burned to read the text, to see what he said, what had happened between them.
“It’s over, Julep.”
Dad’s words smacked into me. “What is?”
“You and Moore. Whatever has been going on, it stops. Right now.”
“Dad—”
“I have argued enough with him that I don’t have the energy to do it with you, too. You are my daughter. You know better — plain and simple.”
I swallowed.
“And as for Holden, he directly disobeyed me, and he’s paying the price for it.”
“What did you do?”
He looked right at me. “I put him on probation.”
“Probation,” I echoed, heart squeezing painfully in my chest. “Meaning…”
“He knows the terms. I don’t need to explain them to you.”
What he meant by that was that he assumed I was smart enough to already know — and he was right. I had hoped against all reason that my father might listen to him, that he might spare Holden. But of course, he hadn’t.
I didn’t need verbal confirmation to know that he’d threatened to bench Holden during the playoffs if he didn’t break it off with me.
Tears pricked my eyes, but I swallowed them back, held my chin higher. “I understand we went against your wishes, but—”
“You’re on probation, too.”
I scoffed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that if you don’t end this shit, I will check you into rehab.”