Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 134746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
“I will.” I shake a little more glitter out of my hair before turning to follow her outside.
I’m almost walking unsteadily from the madness rattling around my head.
All I want to do is pull her too close to breathe.
Pull her close and lay claim and take everything, every soft inch of her, until she’s entirely mine forever.
XIX
WALKING ON SUNSHINE
(ELLE)
I can’t stop thinking about the way August looked at me.
Standing there with the sunlight pouring through the hallway windows of that school, looking like he just lost a fight with a can of silver spray paint, telling me no.
He’d made an excuse, but I knew what he was really doing.
Drawing a line between us.
Being careful.
Because even if we kiss and touch so casually, neither of us knows what we’re doing, and he’s made his doubts clear about whether we should be doing anything at all.
So he told me no.
Reminded me of my place.
And he looked at me with such longing it nearly cut my heart into a thousand tiny slivers of want.
God.
How can a man look at you like you’re water in a desert? Like he wants you more than life itself?
And how can that wanting make me feel lonely?
It’s because I’m not with him, I realize.
Because I’m falling so hard for the man behind the defensive walls and knee-jerk reactions, and every time we’re apart it’s like this hole opens and eats me up inside, swallowing more and more of me up without August there to anchor me in place.
I curl up in my bed in my pajamas, a little rose pink silk cami and shorts set with lace embroidery on the edges. I eye my phone.
My notifications are still popping at a good clip, but I can’t even look.
Some of it’s nice, some of it’s ugly, some of it’s dick pics, and after considering for a moment I just tap and uninstall the Twitter and Instagram apps.
They’re not what I’m thinking about, though.
I pluck my lower lip with two fingers, eyeing Google.
I shouldn’t.
I shouldn’t, but . . .
He already told me about Charisma, didn’t he?
Is it really that bad for me to look up how long ago she died?
It couldn’t have been too many years.
If it happened before I left for college, I’m sure I would’ve heard about it. The whole city would have talked about little else for at least a week.
I just can’t help thinking that’s part of why he puts that wall up.
I still worry that deep down, he’s still in love with his dead ex-wife.
And I need to know the truth.
I need to know where the lines really are.
Just like I need to crush this ridiculous hope inside me that maybe, maybe he could feel something for me, when I know he can’t.
Just because he didn’t push me away after sex the last two times—just because he held me and read me to sleep as tenderly as he read to those kids—it doesn’t mean anything.
It just means he was humoring me. Being nice.
The same gentle niceness he showed today at the school.
I had to call in a favor with Lena to make that happen. Just showing up at a random school and asking to play with the kids is begging to end up on a federal list somewhere. But the veterinary practice Lena works at does puppy days with the kids every so often, especially when they’ve got a new litter on the shelter side and want to socialize the dogs so they’ll get used to being around noisy kids with no concept of personal space. She’s friends with several of the teachers, so she talked Mrs. Morris into letting us weasel in for the day.
I just did it to make a point.
I hadn’t expected my ovaries to implode as I watched August bond with that little girl and patiently let her glitterbomb him.
He’s going to be pulling that stuff out of his teeth for a week.
And I’m stalling.
Why am I even having a crisis of conscience about this?
Do it. Do it.
charisma marshall date of death, I search.
Oh.
I don’t know why I’m surprised she’s got a Wikipedia page. She was an actress, after all.
My Gawd, she was stunning.
Seriously more beautiful than model-pretty Marissa Sullivan. I guess August has a thing for brunettes. She was smoky and smoldering and lived up to her name, with large green-brown eyes and a mouth so gorgeous I might start questioning which way I swing just looking at her.
I wryly tweak a strand of my own hair.
Definitely not his type.
I could never pull off her presence and elegance.
She looks like she’d have fit with him perfectly, though.
Meanwhile, in every tabloid pic I see of August and me . . .
I look like someone cut me out of a photo of someone’s tacky backyard barbecue and photoshopped me in with him.
Totally out of place.