Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
I pressed my mouth to the spot on his neck closest to me, and I felt the arm around the middle of my back give me a gentle squeeze.
“For someone who said he’s never taken care of anything before, it sure does sound like you’ve had a whole lot to take care of,” I told him.
His breath was slow, slow, slow. “Nothing that was ever just mine though. Nothing that ever really mattered to me.”
I pulled back just enough to peer into those eyes. Mine had adjusted slightly enough to catch the faint outline of them, of his features, despite how dark it was so high up.
Alex gave me a long, long look but didn’t say a word, weighing down the moment that much more. Forcing it to be heavier and heavier by the second. I had to swallow hard.
“Did I ever tell you I’ve always wanted to go skydiving?” I whispered.
That instantly changed the moment, bringing back the shit talker I knew and loved. His tone almost sounded innocent. “Yeah?”
I knew exactly what kind of fire I was starting, I really did, but I still didn’t expect it.
I nodded.
And in the next heartbeat, it was like someone cut the invisible cables holding us up in the atmosphere, and we were plummeting. Like all those rides at theme parks. Like we really were skydiving from the way he managed to fall with his back to the ground with me still clinging to him like crazy.
I screamed as we fell.
I screamed and I screamed and…
The fucking butthole holding me, with his cape whipping up around us, started laughing. What was more than likely two seconds later, but felt like ten minutes, we suddenly stopped halfway to the ground.
Alex kept cracking up as his arms tightened some more and we changed to vertical again.
Maybe I was going to kill him, but it wasn’t going to be today, I thought as I swallowed up the glee in his rich laugh.
It wasn’t going to be today, I confirmed to myself as he moved me around in those arms so he was carrying me, and then he tossed me into the air and caught me again, and I laughed too with pure fucking delight. The truth was, it was absolute joy. So much of it I thought I was going to burst.
Alex did it one more time before we went straight up into the sky and plummeted all over again, screaming and laughing.
It was a thousand times better than skydiving could ever be.
Not for a single second did I feel a pinch of fear.
I trusted him.
I trusted him completely, I realized.
And it was then that I knew without a single fucking doubt, as I screamed my lungs out, that I was in love.
Not just a little bit either.
My-life-will-never-be-the-same love.
And it had nothing to do with the vision or being Atraxian or the Trinity or my safety.
It just had to do with Alex.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
I had my arms looped around Alex’s neck when he dropped to a stop in front of his house.
My throat ached from screaming, and I was cold even though he’d pulled his cape over his shoulder and let me use it as the most ridiculous, incredible blanket of all time. I decided one day I was going to ask him what it was made of because the material was so strange. My jaw was sore from clenching it too, and my arms were exhausted from clutching him for dear life, even though I trusted him not to drop me.
But I’d never felt more alive. More energetic. I couldn’t remember ever being happier.
And that was the thing that snuck under my skin the most.
How happy I felt. I was almost delirious. I’d never done drugs, but I figured this was what being high had to be like. Like you were in a cloud made of cotton candy riding on a sugar high.
But there was that other feeling too. The one that felt too big for my body. For him. For this man who huffed and puffed and had more than likely blown some houses down at some point in his life—for a good reason. A man who was a total pain in the ass.
And I was thinking about that as he lowered us back to Earth, and I wished I could have recorded it. I wished I could have seen if it looked like how it did in the movies when Electro-Man descended.
But I doubted it. I was sure I looked like a fucking wreck.
I reached up the second my feet touched the ground, and I palmed his smooth cheek as I wobbled. My cheeks were achy from how hard I’d smiled for so long. “You made my dream come true.” I smiled even wider. “I’ll never be able to thank you, but I’ll buy you some cookies, deal?”