Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 64929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Everyone loved him even more for doing his own thing. He wouldn’t have taken days combing through fetishes and trying to follow the guidelines to the letter. Owen would have known exactly what he was going to do, and no matter what, the teacher would have loved it. She’d say she loved his ingenuity, or his drive, or his passion for the subject.
I, on the other hand, was going to turn in a mess. I was going to end up completely oversharing about how I couldn’t manage to get a tail in my ass, so I wasn’t sure how the puppy felt. I had to get some credit for finding a fetish to research and trying, right?
Looking down at the computer, I told myself to pick it up and start doing my other homework if I wasn’t going to get the practical part of my research done, but I just couldn’t. Everyone else got to slack off once in a while. I was going to take the rest of the night off and ignore everything that was waiting for me.
Glancing out the window at the darkening sky, I wondered what Owen was doing. Would he be home for dinner? Eating dinner together wasn’t something we’d done since I’d had to move back in, and I’d avoided the house for so long once I’d been able to escape that it’d probably been years since we’d sat down together.
Would he like that?
Would it make the house feel like a home again?
I wasn’t sure anything would ever be able to make it feel that way for me, but maybe it would be different for Owen. He probably had tons of happy memories of our parents and the things they’d done together, of things like family dinners where they’d sat down and talked without the awkward silences and judgmental looks that always happened when I’d been around.
I’d make dinner for him. I’d make him something nice. Even if it was only ramen noodles with spices in them, there had to be enough in the kitchen to make him something decent. That would at least show him I was trying to make things right. Then I’d apologize and stay the hell out of his business.
I shouldn’t care who he slept with.
I mean, I didn’t care who he slept with.
Heading toward the stairs, I looked over at his closed bedroom door that seemed to mark the status of our relationship. Closed and off limits. I was going to apologize, and that would make it better.
At least, I hoped it would.
**** The slam of the front door made me jump, and I spilled some of the sauce before I could dump it into the pot with the noodles. It didn’t look anything like the picture, but it was edible and didn’t taste too bad, so I hoped that would count.
I’d been right about the meager state of our pantry, but there had been enough odds and ends to make a real meal. Spaghetti and jarred sauce probably wasn’t much, but there had also been a random package of frozen rolls at the back of the freezer that didn’t look freezer burned so I was pretty impressed with how it had turned out.
Owen was such an unknown variable that I wasn’t sure if he would notice the effort I’d made or just lay into me for being callous and thoughtless. He’d be justified, but I needed to tell him how wrong I’d been. I just needed to apologize. It wouldn’t turn back the clock and keep me from saying those things, but hopefully, we could just forget that I’d been mean and that he’d seen me…
Well, naked with an anal plug in my hands.
“Owen?
I heard him hang up his keys, but I didn’t hear his footsteps. Was he standing there at the door, like he thought I’d just go away if he ignored me long enough? Finally, he appeared in the doorway, and I couldn’t read the look on his face. One thing was clear, though — his hair hadn’t been that tousled when he’d left, and he hadn’t looked nearly that disheveled. He didn’t look smug, though, or gleeful.
“What?” he asked shortly. One-word answers weren’t usually a good sign when he was pissed off. Great. Not sure what to do, I stood there awkwardly and not realizing I had the spoon for the pasta sauce in my hand until it was dripping everywhere.
“I… Um… I… One sec.” Great. I looked even more like a loser.
Turning around to put the spoon back in the pot, I gave myself just a moment to breathe. I’d apologize, then everything would be fine. But as I turned back around, I knew it wouldn’t be that easy.
Owen’s face was still unreadable, and if anything, it felt colder than when he’d left. “I’m sorry I… I’m sorry I was mean. I don’t… I don’t think that about you. And your