Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“Don’t worry. No one else saw,” he assured me, reaching for my hand, and placing it on his arm. “I believe we are about to miss the horrible first course,” he said.
And that was it.
He didn’t mention it.
He didn’t shoot me scandalous looks at the table.
We just… ate.
And talked.
Like we hadn’t just snuck away and had sex in some hidden room in the back of the building.
Insecurity, ugly and uncomfortable, wrapped its cold, slimy hand around my throat, squeezing until I felt like there was no air in the room.
It was right then that Brock stood beside my chair, holding out a hand.
When I glanced up, I couldn’t read his face.
But I placed my hand in his and let him pull me up, then lead me to the dance floor as I tried to tell myself it was to keep up appearances. When the truth was that I needed the assurance that he wasn’t immediately over me after we’d gotten intimate.
“What’s the matter?” he asked as he pulled me to his chest and started to lead.
“Nothing,” I insisted. But it was too fast. Too telling.
“Liar,” he whispered down by my ear.
“I’m hungry,” I insisted, giving him half the truth in the hopes that he would take it as all of it and let it drop.
“Me too. But that’s not what has your eyes looking like that.”
“My eyes are fine,” I said, even as I kept my gaze averted.
“If you’re worried about the well-being of your panties, don’t worry,” he said, and I could hear the smirk in his voice. “They’re safe. Right here by my heart,” he said, guiding my hand there.
“You’re ridiculous,” I told him, but he accomplished his goal.
He got me to smile.
He got me to look up at him.
“You love it,” he shot back, leaning down to press his forehead to mine for a second. “So, what is it, another forty minutes or so of stuffy nonsense before we can make a run for it?”
“Sounds about right,” I agreed, and found myself suddenly torn. Between the urge to run off with him to get fast food in our formal wear and the desire to have the night stretch as long as possible.
Whether it was long enough or not, though, about forty-five minutes later, we were making our way out the front doors and down the steps toward my waiting car.
And there on my seat in the back was something that hadn’t been there before.
A white envelope.
“What’s that?” Brock asked as he slid in beside me, looking down at the envelope I was holding.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t here before,” I told him. “Should I open it?”
“Not yet,” he said, carefully taking it by the very edge and setting it down in the door pocket. “We’re going to use some caution. And tweezers,” he said, reaching out to squeeze my knee. “We’re not going to obsess over it,” he said. “And we will ask Mitchell if he saw anyone near the car.”
“He probably didn’t. On nights that are going to stretch on, I tell him that he’s free to go get food or run errands, so long as he is back by the time the event is coming to an end. So if we was in a restaurant, he wouldn’t have seen anything.”
“Still, we’ll ask.”
And so he did.
Making Mitchell look almost guilty for not having seen anything.
But we tried not to obsess over that as we walked into the fluorescent-lighted fast food place, standing in line behind a bunch of teens who openly stared at us when we walked in.
“It’s a sad day when a fast food meal that cost a couple bucks tastes better than a meal that was, what, eight hundred a plate?”
“It went up a hundred this year,” I told him, dipping my fry in honey mustard.
“Interesting choice,” he said as he used the barbecue sauce.
“Almost as interesting as your choice to mix orange soda with the lemon-lime,” I sited shaking my head at him.
“Don’t knock it until you try it,” he said, reaching across the table to snag one of my nuggets.
“Hey,” I grumbled.
“You ate half of my onion rings,” he reminded me.
And it was just so… normal.
More normal than most things in my life.
Because, despite the outfit, this moment had nothing at all to do with the life I’d built. There was no image to uphold, no need to try to prove myself worthy of anything.
It was just me. And my preferences. And a man I was a little worried that I was starting to fall for.
Worried because it had an expiration date.
When he figured out who was out to get me.
Then he would be gone.
And I would be acutely aware of the sudden emptiness of my life.
“Uh oh. Where’d you go?” Brock asked, making my gaze shoot up to him.
Caught, I knew I couldn’t tell him the truth.