Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 100202 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100202 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
The monotony of it was as peaceful as it was depressing.
…asked if we were financing your photography hobby…
Indignation sizzled in my veins. It wasn’t a hobby. It was my profession. It was how I kept us housed and clothed and fed. Was I out there scoring New York galleries and magazine covers? No, but I had a happy kid, and that was enough for me.
Is it really, though?
I ignored that little voice and slowly, surely, put my parents and the weight of all their disappointment back into the neat little box I kept them in. Between edits, I glanced up at the photographs on the wall.
I used to want to be so much…more.
There was no way I could enter that competition. Not now. Not with Sutton at such a formative age. Not that I’d even get in. My shots weren’t nearly on that level, but if I did? If I had to choose between my dream internship and the stability I’d worked so hard to provide for Sutton? No. Nope. No way.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t move forward and build something for myself.
Starting with getting my pictures into the local gallery.
If nothing I had was good enough now, well then, I just needed to work harder, to take pictures that were good enough. I’d carve out the time, maybe focus on some of the action shots I could take if I worked with Weston. The kinds of shots on the World Geographic flyer.
Once it hit seven, there was no more work, and Weston stood in front of me with a pizza and a bottle of wine.
“Seemed like a pizza and movie kind of night,” he said, putting them both on the table. “But I can leave you alone if you’d rather.” He’d showered, his hair still damp, and had changed into lounge pants and a long-sleeved shirt he’d shoved up at the forearms. There were two worry lines between his dark eyes, and I knew he meant what he’d said. He wouldn’t push. Not like I had. He’d give me space if I wanted it, and that made me crave the opposite.
“Sounds perfect.” I closed my laptop. “But only if we eat on the couch.”
“Deal,” he said, his lips curving in a small smile.
An hour later, the pizza had been devoured, the wine was three-fourths gone, and we sat side by side on the couch while superheroes destroyed yet another city in the name of saving it.
Weston’s long legs were stretched out, his feet resting on the coffee table with his ankles crossed, and he balanced a bottle of water on the armrest, sipping from it every now and again. His arm ran along the back of the couch but didn’t touch me.
I put my empty wineglass on the table and leaned back, tucking my legs up under me. Maybe it was the stress of seeing the Wilsons, or knowing Sutton was out with them. Hell, maybe it was the way Weston had stepped up to my side, like he was ready to go to war for me, or maybe it was just the tension in the house, but I desperately, desperately wanted that arm to wrap around me.
“You really can’t ski?” he asked out of the blue.
I turned slightly to face him. “You’ve been thinking about that since yesterday?”
“You live on a ski resort.” His gaze locked with mine, and heat flooded my system. I was ninety percent sure I was blushing, and I didn’t care.
“And? Are you going to ask someone who works at an NYC skyscraper why they don’t BASE jump off it?” I raised a brow.
“Not the same thing.” He shook his head. “Not even close. I can teach you.”
“Pretty sure I am unteachable. Didn’t you hear? Mauled children. Parents screaming. Me, rolling down the hill like an avalanche, taking out everyone in my path.”
He chuckled. “How many years ago was this?”
“Nine. I couldn’t exactly ski for the first time while pregnant, and I didn’t trust anyone but Ava with Sutton for those first few years.”
“You haven’t tried again in nine years?” His attention slid to my mouth.
“Would you be so quick to hurry back to the slopes if you’d been a menace the first go-round?”
“Menace?” There was that smirk again.
God save me from that freaking smirk.
“Menace,” I assured him.
“I’ve broken more than a few bones on that mountain,” he said, sliding his water bottle to the end table.
“And you went back up. There are some words for that, you know.” I tapped my chin. “Foolish, reckless, masochistic, for starters.”
“Tenacious,” he said, his voice dropping lower. “The word you’re looking for is tenacious.”
“Are you always tenacious?” I shifted closer unconsciously, like my body rejected the inches between us.
“About everything I want.” The dark promise in his eyes, the heat in his gaze had me tilting back my head. In challenge? In invitation? Hell if I knew. What about what I wanted? Not for the sake of my career, or even for Sutton’s benefit, but just myself?