Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
I’d had two long-term relationships.
The first was a heartbreaker. I was deeply in love (I thought). So when I found he was emotionally cheating on me via texts with his high school girlfriend, I’d been gutted.
After I broke up with him, she broke up with her boyfriend, and they got together. They were that way for a while, even got engaged, then in a rather spectacular (and humiliating for him) fashion, she returned to the boyfriend she dumped, and he tried to return to me.
That didn’t happen.
The second just petered out. He knew it, I knew it. We went our separate ways and were still friends, in a more friend/acquaintance/used-to-sleep-together kind of way.
I’d never dated a biker. I’d never dated anyone outside my social or cultural stratum.
The thing with Hugger wasn’t that.
It was Suzette and needing to focus on her. It was also Suzette, and her needing all kinds of support, and not having to witness right in her face two people circling each other (and what might come of it). It was Denver, and the fact he lived there.
And it was that he gave no indication he wanted my thumbs out of his belt loops and my arms wrapped around him, my cheek to his shoulder.
Oh yeah.
That was the biggie.
“I don’t get it,” he said, bringing me back to us sitting opposite each other in a bodacious sandwich joint.
“You don’t get what?”
“You spit on paintings for a living. How did you get your sweet crib?”
I put aside my unsettling thoughts, laughed at what he said, and told him, “Saliva has enzymes that help gently clean away dirt.”
“I suspected. Still, you live in Scottsdale, which is class. And so is your complex and your unit. It’s a lot for someone who cleans paintings with spit and a Q-Tip.”
“I won at roulette, thirteen black, about three months before my grandfather died of a stroke and left me some money.”
“Right,” he said, munching into a potato chip.
“Most of my place was like it is, but Larry is a contractor and he put in the kitchen at a massive discount using stuff some rich lady ordered, paid for, decided she didn’t want, and just ordered something else even though it was custom and she couldn’t get a refund on it. She didn’t want it hanging around, so she told Larry he could have it.”
“Rich people do crazy shit,” he muttered, picking up his sandwich and taking the last big bite.
“They do,” I agreed. “Anyway, his guys did some adjustments so it could work in my space. Larry was able to get his hands on some top-notch appliances that had some scratches and dings you can’t see. And voilà! Fantastic new kitchen.”
“Who’s Larry?”
“My…I don’t know. My ex-stepmom’s husband. So I guess he’s kind of my sorta-like stepdad, once removed.”
Hugger studied me, his deep brown eyes active, but I didn’t know exactly what he was mulling over.
“I take it you’re still tight with your stepmom,” he noted while I took a bite of my own sandwich.
I chewed while nodding.
Then something occurred to me, so I blurted, “I’m not that woman.”
He tipped his head to the side. “What woman?”
“The kind who lets daddy pay for everything. I quit school because he and I had a thing. I was fed up with having those kinds of things with my dad, although, that was the worst thing we’d ever had. Since he was paying my tuition, not to mention for everything else, I walked away. In the end, I did it myself. Sure, Gram and Gramps and Mom gave me very generous checks for my birthday and Christmas to help out. But it was mostly me. It’s all mostly me.”
“I wasn’t takin’ a jab at you,” he said.
“Just so you know,” I mumbled. “It’s a point of pride for me.”
“It should be. You told your dad to fuck off and built all that, and you’re not even thirty. Yeah. It should be.”
I suddenly felt warm all over.
“What brought you to the biker life?” I asked.
“My ma wanted it for me.”
I smiled at him. “She a biker babe?”
“No. She was a prostitute.”
I choked on saliva that would clean a good inch of an oil painting.
“Yeah,” he whispered, and now the brown in his eyes that were locked on me was like petrified wood. Dry and impossibly hard.
I pulled myself together and promised, “My reaction was about surprise, nothing else.”
“Right,” he muttered, throwing his head back with the edge of the chip packet to his lips so he could consume the last bits.
And man, he was just him. In my kitchen. At a sandwich joint.
I liked it.
I totally had to be very careful.
Especially now.
“I’m serious. I have no issue with sex workers,” I asserted.
“Let’s move on,” he said on a sigh.
“Let’s not,” I returned sharply. “I don’t know your story, but I can read some of it, considering she wanted the life you’re leading, and you’re leading it. So I can assume you were close and she mattered to you.”