Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 157273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
“Not like me.” I gripped her hip, and she pressed her fingers to my mouth. I ceased breathing. She couldn’t forgive me, not that painlessly.
“Simple and easy, remember?” she whispered. “It’s all I can handle right now. Let’s just agree that now is all that matters. The past is over, and we can’t have a future. I won’t give up New York, and you won’t leave your family if you can help it, and if you can’t, God knows where you’ll be assigned.” She tried to smile and failed. “So, unless you can think of something that prevents you from being mine for the next five weeks, please don’t make me ask again. This is the only chance we’ll get, and I want it.” Her fingers slipped to my chin. “As long as you do.”
The panic filling her eyes stole my words and my best intentions. She’d never been more vulnerable with me, even when we were teenagers. If I misstepped now, she’d turn those walls into a fortress.
“Hudson?” She drew back.
“Five weeks isn’t long enough.” My voice roughened. If this was longer than five weeks, if we were going the distance, I would have begged her to listen to me grovel. But digging up our past would bring a storm she couldn’t weather, not now, not when she was about to wage war to get her role back. But after, when this was all over, she needed to hear me out. “But I’ll take it.”
She beamed, then leaned in and brushed a kiss over my lips. “Good. Now we can sleep.” She turned in my arms and snuggled back against me.
I had five weeks to make her the happiest I could, and I wasn’t going to fuck it up. Whatever she needed, I’d give her.
Our breathing evened out, and I was almost asleep when I heard her say, “Your dreams matter, too, Hudson.”
The only dream I cared about was the one I was currently living, where I got to fall asleep next to her. It was the dream I blinked out of at five a.m. as Allie’s phone rang.
She rolled out of my arms, slapped the top of the nightstand a few times, then finally answered the damn thing. “You’d better be dead, Anne. Yes, I’m at Hudson’s. Because I’m a grown woman who can sleep wherever and with whomever she chooses.”
“As long as it’s me.” I pulled her back against me. I wasn’t due in until 0900 after last night’s mission, which meant I had enough time to watch Allie come a couple of times and catch a couple more hours of shut-eye. Perfect morning.
“What do you mean, you haven’t slept?” Allie tensed. “You what? You’re kidding. No, that doesn’t make sense. No way it’s him.” She sat up and my arm fell away. “No, I’ll call him in a few hours. Because not everyone is up at five!” Her spine stiffened. “No, you did not. You didn’t tell him why? Fine. I’ll be home by nine.” She hung up the phone and slid it back onto the nightstand.
“Feel like sharing?” I cracked an eye open.
She looked at me with wide eyes. “Anne found Juniper’s original birth certificate.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Allie
Bright2lit: She deserves whatever she gets.
The clock ticked as I sat in the armchair of our living room, scrolling through Instagram, liking a few of Reagan’s and Harlow’s posts as they geared up for summer intensives.
Good for them. I’d spent my morning having two spectacular orgasms while riding Hudson, pushed over the edge on the second by watching him lose complete control under me—after I made him beg, of course. Surely, that counted for cardio.
Anne sat on the couch across from me next to Kenna, her back twisted so she could look out the window, her fingers drumming a quick rhythm on the upholstered back.
Kenna and I shared a look, and then she swiped on her iPad. “Anne, you are going to have to find some other outlet for the nervous energy, because you’re giving me anxiety.”
Anne’s fingers paused, but she didn’t look away. “Just nervous.”
“We can tell,” I noted, tucking my feet under me and reaching for my water bottle so Kenna wouldn’t get on me about hydrating.
“One of you could read to me,” she suggested.
“Would you like to hear about a new minimally invasive procedure for rotator cuff repair that’s showing good results in clinicals?” Kenna asked. “Because that’s what I’m reading about.”
“I thought you weren’t a surgeon?” Anne finally gave up on her pretzel maneuver and twisted onto her knees toward the window.
“I’m not. I’d rather treat the whole patient and find ways to prevent getting cut open in the first place. Doesn’t mean I don’t read about what’s out there.” She swiped again, then glanced pointedly to the end table next to me. “That banana isn’t doing you any good just sitting there.”