Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Oh, and she didn’t smell at-fucking-all.
And I’d just been pretty fuckin’ close to her as I’d driven her here.
As close as one could get without both of us being naked…
Let’s just say, what I smelled wasn’t stink.
It was womanly, and so goddamn appealing that just thinking about it made me hard all over again.
I probably shouldn’t have reacted the way that I did.
I definitely should’ve kept my mouth completely shut, but fuck. The women and the way they were talking about Milena. It did something to me.
It made me enraged, and I didn’t like catty bitches that spoke ill of people they were supposed to protect.
I’d had enough of that happen in high school regarding my little sister.
She’d changed at some point, and her friends had noticed. Instead of treating her with caring and compassion, they’d turned on her. Which had only been worse for Keely.
Channeling the anger that always formed in my heart when it came to how my sister was treated, I stood from my bike, making myself known.
“I’ll have you know that Milena was here meeting me,” I said carefully. “She wasn’t here to ‘stalk’ you. She was here to meet me to give me a key since I was in the area. I can also share that she’d been running all the way from her house, and she most certainly did not stink. She smelled fantastic, and had she not been fresh from a breakup with an abusive man,”—I leveled Hazel with a look—“I would’ve made a move on her because she’s gorgeous. I also have to admit that she’s likely only a ‘cold fish’ with her ex because he was a disgusting human being. Why would you want to give your body to a man that you don’t respect?”
Neither woman had anything to say to that.
“As women, you should uplift each other. You should never tear each other down. And I hate that Milena has someone like you as a friend when it’s clear that you don’t think of her as a friend.” I turned my back on them and straddled my bike. Only when I had my helmet in place did I turn back to them and say, “Maybe you should do yourself a favor and start investigating why you have so much hate in your heart toward a woman that only has love in hers.”
With that, I started my bike up and headed toward my house.
I switched my bike out for my work truck and trailer, then headed to Milena’s place, The Grizzly.
Her shop was a little bit farther out than I would’ve liked, but that was okay. It was a nice change of scenery on the outskirts of Dallas.
A lot less headache, too.
Sometimes, I questioned why I’d decided to come back to this hellhole.
But then I remembered about my task for this afternoon, and all made sense again.
Traffic. People. Higher cost of living.
All of it was worth it to be closer to my brother.
Hours later, I was setting up the plastic so that the wood dust didn’t go all into the air ducts and into the finished back area when she came in.
She looked beautiful, albeit tired.
“How far did you get, Go?” I asked, unable to stop myself from asking.
She gave me a halfhearted smile and uttered, “All nineteen miles done.”
“Nice,” I declared. “Never got up to a marathon, mostly because the thought of running that far makes me want to cry, but I did a couple of halfs for the Navy when I was in. It sucked. Especially on a trail. I commend you for getting it done.”
She grimaced. “I don’t really do all that well on trails, to be truthful. I have a condition with one of my eyes that pretty much makes it impossible for me to see without both of my eyes open. My left eye has perfect vision. My right I’m nearly blind. But as long as they’re both open, I’m good. But the downfall is on my right side I have absolutely zero depth perception. So running on a trail is damn near impossible without wearing a contact. And the contact makes me feel disoriented because my brain has had so long to adjust that it doesn’t know what to do with twenty-twenty vision out of the one eye.”
“Amblyopia?” I asked. “My sister had that.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “That. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone that has it besides me. That’s…” she paused. “I was going to say exciting, but anyone that has it suffers. And I would never be happy to have someone suffer.”
“She actually doesn’t necessarily have it anymore. From the age of three to seven, she had to wear an eye patch over her good eye. She was able to get it corrected,” I admitted.
“Oh,” she sighed. “That’s what I was supposed to do, to be honest. But we caught it pretty dang late, and there was no way that I would’ve worn an eye patch in middle school.”