Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 130673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
“I told you,” I said.
Toss.
“Uncle Rhyland.”
Toss.
“Is a ticklish.”
Toss.
“Bas—” I remembered Zeta was here. “Man.”
Toss.
When I put her down, Gravity hugged my leg, staring up at me with her enormous dark blue eyes, her lower lip curled down to stop herself from crying.
“What’s going on?” I ruffled her hair.
Where the hell was Dylan? Why wasn’t she coming out? She must’ve heard me walking in.
“Uncle Rhyrand, I got a boo-boo cutting sugar dough.” She extended her arm toward me.
“Let’s see.” I kneeled down on one knee and examined her arm. She was bullshitting me. Her pudgy forearm was pristine, with no scratch in sight.
Zeta chuckled above Gravity’s head.
“Where is it, exactly?” I clasped her little wrist, turning it from side to side.
“Right here.” A chubby finger pointed to a tiny beauty mark.
“Eh, I see.” I nodded gravely. “Looks pretty bad.”
“It hurts.” Another pout.
“Gotta be honest, I don’t know if you’ll make it out of this.”
That earned me a slap on the back of my neck with a kitchen towel from Zeta. I stifled a laugh.
“Go get the Band-Aids and markers. We’ll fix you up.”
Gravity nodded, dashing back to her room.
I stood up to find Zeta grinning big at me. I raised a hand. “Trust me, I’m hating every minute of it.”
“Mio caro, you’re growing up. You’ll be a great dad one day.”
“Is your daughter coming or what? We’re going to be late to a meeting downstairs.” I ignored her observation. I assumed Zeta didn’t know about our fake relationship, so there was no point in explaining my existence in Gravity’s life would be temporary.
“Oh yes. She jumped in the shower. She should be out any minute now.”
“Can you go tell her to hurry up?”
“No. And neither can you. She’s a lady. She needs time to prepare before going out.”
I rolled my tongue along my inner cheek. Gravity returned, clutching a small tin with Band-Aids and her marker box. I got down on one knee, snatching both.
“Where is it again?”
The kid pointed to a beauty mark on a completely different arm. I did appreciate how committed she was to the lie. A lawyer in the making.
“There.”
I opened the tin and grabbed a Band-Aid. I flattened it out on the uninjured spot, smoothing it over her skin. “Ink?”
“A giraffe eating a donut.”
“Random, but I’ll allow.” I grabbed the markers and started doodling on her Band-Aid.
It all started when Gravity got a paper cut one day when I was babysitting her. She insisted I put a Band-Aid on it, but when she realized they’d run out of colorful, themed Band-Aids, she threw a fit. This resulted in me giving her a TED Talk about the decay of moral society through consumerism and the pink tax before concluding that anyway, it was best to buy plain Band-Aids and just draw what you wanted on them. We’d been patching her completely unblemished body ever since. I doubted Michelangelo was ever as busy as I was these days.
“All done.” I dropped the brown, yellow, and pink markers back into the box. “You’re as good as new.”
“Thank you. I wove you.” Gravity hugged me.
What was with the Casablancas family and being ultra-affectionate? And why couldn’t Dylan touch me? She was the only one whose hands I wanted on me anyway.
I patted Gravity’s back awkwardly. I still wasn’t thrilled about befriending a toddler.
“Did you…draw smileys on her Band-Aid?” A voice coming from the hallway made my head snap up.
Shit. Now this was a sight worthy of being drawn in the Sistine Chapel.
Dylan, all made up, with a brown-and-white polka-dot summer dress offering a deep slit and a peek at her long, shapely legs. She’d done her hair in big, fluffy waves and put shimmer on her cheekbones, and she had that glittery thing on her lips and her inner eyes that made her look all dewy.
“It’s a giraffe and a donut,” I corrected matter-of-factly. “I will not have my work thoughtlessly disparaged by an amateur.”
“I didn’t realize we were…commissioning your work.” Dylan swallowed a laugh.
“You ran out of fancy Band-Aids.” I stood up slowly, since all my blood had rushed to my dick.
Dylan just stared at me with a mixture of awe and softness. It was the first time the grumpy woman had oozed warmth toward me, and not the kind that wished to set me on fire.
“Ready to hit the road?” I glanced at my lowly Cartier.
Finally, Dylan shook her head, snapping out of her weird reverie. “Um, sure. Mama, is that okay? It’s five minutes from here and shouldn’t take long.”
“Tesoro mia, of course. You go have your fun. Make sure to drink a glass of wine. You deserve it.”
DYLAN
Can you hear this sound, Dylan? It is the sound of feminism leaving your body. Because you just witnessed Rhyland Coltridge being amazing to your child.
Fatherly, even.
But you need to reel in your desperation. You’ve already made it clear you want to screw him, and he passed on the offer. Multiple times, in fact. And considering he’s a sexual-assault survivor, it’d be nice not to treat him like a piece of meat.