Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
But now, I had an idea.
An idea I really, really liked, forming slowly in my head, making my heart beat just a little faster the more I thought about it.
“I know what I’m going to do,” I said. “I have no clue what’s going to happen in a few weeks or months or years, but I know what I’m going to do tomorrow night. And it’s going to be good.”
“Cheers to that,” Sam said. As more customers filtered into the bar, I brainstormed, feeling more excited than I had in a long time. A couple of hours later, when I’d finished my beer and a big water, I paid up and headed over to the Henderson property, where Jack was helping with major kitchen renovations.
When I walked in, Jack was helping another subcontractor, Jason, to properly space and place tiles for the backsplash. Jack was in full-on work mode, and smears of grout paste covered his hands and forearms.
He turned to see me, his striking eyes meeting mine, his hair in a messy swoop after a day of hard work.
He looked beyond handsome. He was a fucking dream, and he’d been right there in front of me, all of this time.
“All right, Jason, good time to break for the night,” Jack told him. “I’ll finish up what we need to tonight and we can continue tomorrow.”
“Howdy, Tristan,” Jason told me, giving me a nod. “Sounds good, boss.”
A few minutes later Jason had cleaned up and headed out. I waited patiently to get a moment alone with Jack, and the moment I did, excitement and a strange nervousness started to bubble up inside me.
“Today’s been a long one, huh?” he asked.
“Will you go on a date with me?” I blurted out, my heart already pounding at double speed. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been nervous like this. I’d never really been nervous to ask a girl out on a date before.
I had a crush.
A fucking crush. Holy mother of God, I really was crazy for him.
Jack cocked his head to one side, like he hadn’t really understood what I asked. “What, do we need more lumber for your property?”
I snorted. “No, not the lumber yard,” I said. “Will you go on a date with me? Tomorrow night. Like, I come to your house, pick you up, we go to dinner and a movie?”
He blinked at me, once, twice, three times, in dumbfounded silence. “A date,” he said.
“You heard me.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I expected him to laugh me out of the room. To tell me I was being childish. To tell me that all of this had to end, sooner rather than later. But instead, as I stood there with my heart beating like a hummingbird, I saw a bit of color appear on Jack’s cheeks.
He was blushing. Blushing because I’d asked him on a date. Who the hell were we, two teenagers before prom? I’d literally swallowed his cum before, but this little question was making us both silly.
“Okay,” he finally said with a nod. “That sounds nice.”
I breathed in deep, hoping he couldn’t tell how nervous I was. But seeing him blush, just a little, from something like this, honestly was making my cock start hardening.
“Great,” I told him, keeping my cool. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
13
JACK
When I swung my front door open the next night, right at seven o’clock on the dot as Tristan rang my doorbell, I saw him standing there with a dozen red roses in his hands.
“For the handsome man,” he said, holding them out to me.
“I thought you said flowers were dumb,” I told him. “I remember you went on a date with a girl once and asked her way too many questions about why people like flowers, and how silly it is because they die so fast anyway.”
Tristan nodded. “And then you told me all of the reasons that flowers are wonderful and beautiful even though they only last a few days. You said it made you feel a little basic, but that they’re the best scent you can imagine.”
“Guilty as charged.”
He bit his lower lip. “I knew you secretly fuckin’ loved those things, Blue.”
I didn’t even want to admit to myself how good it felt to see him. For the past few days, my heart had felt like it was stranded out at sea, rocking like hell in the waves.
I wasn’t going to admit it to him, but I’d been spiraling ever since we’d gotten back into town, feeling emptier and emptier by the moment. I’d thrown myself into work because it was the only way I knew how to distract myself. The walls of this house had felt like an anchor—in a good way and a bad way, now. I had been looking at everything with way too much meaning. Every creaky floorboard that I’d known since I was a kid was familiar, but it was also a representation of everything I’d lost.