Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 63055 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63055 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
He has my undying gratitude.
But he’s been right from the start. I’m bad news for him and his family. Now I’m going to cause him stress with his pack.
I definitely am not going to cause him trouble with the Detroit mafia, too.
As soon as this fight’s over, I need to get out of here. Break things off with Bo. I can’t have him acting like the hero to save my ass. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to him.
Bo bought a charger, and my phone’s plugged in now. I texted my aunt last night to tell her I was spending the night with a friend.
I’m pretty sure she knows that friend is Bo because she wrote back, Please believe you can be honest with me. I just want you to be safe.
I wrote, I will be safe!
I know, it’s probably much less than she wanted, and I’ll probably have to suffer through some kind of safe sex lecture when I get back.
“So...now what?” I ask Bo when we’re both through brushing our teeth.
His expression is tight. “We have a couple hours to burn. I don’t know—want to go see some of Tucson?”
My chest tightens even more. How is this guy so damn sweet?
“Yeah, that’d be nice.” I lace my fingers through his, savoring every touch, every gesture as our last.
“Want to learn how to drive a motorcycle?” he asks when we get outside.
Some of the heaviness on my limbs lifts, and I almost manage a smile. “Totally.”
Bo flashes that pirate grin at me, and for a moment, my heart flutters—happiness flitting its delicate wings—before I remember I don’t get to keep this.
I don’t get to keep him.
But I have these moments. The world sharpens into focus. The sun is already warming the cool autumn morning, and I’m with the guy who is sex on wheels. I put on the helmet and listen carefully as he explains how to hold in the clutch and kick the motorcycle to life. It takes me several tries—five to be exact—but I get it going.
Pirate grin.
Swoon.
“Okay, now you’re going to practice putting it into gear. Have you driven a stick?”
I shake my head.
He swings his leg over the seat to sit on the bike behind me, reaching around to hold the handlebars.
For a moment, I stop listening, savoring instead the way his body snugs up against mine. His freshly-showered clean scent. The sight of his strong forearms and big hands.
I love you.
Those are the words that pop into my head.
I don’t say them, of course.
I’ll never say them. It wouldn’t do either of us any good. But they’re real and true.
He explains the gear shifting with the clutch and then demonstrates it a couple times before he lets me try.
I instantly kill the bike.
Dammit.
Three more tries to kickstart the engine. Four to get the bike in gear and moving.
Bo’s arms stay loose around me, like he’s ready to take over if I screw up, but we’re off, putzing in first gear up the street.
“Now put the clutch in and change gear,” he says in my ear.
Unbelievably, I do it.
I laugh as we pick up speed. I take us on the back streets near downtown, driving up and down through historical neighborhoods.
“Take a right here,” Bo directs, pointing to a larger street. I follow his directions, and soon we’re climbing a road that leads up a large hill—or maybe a small peak—with a giant letter “A” on it for the U of A.
The landscape in Arizona is unbelievably different from Michigan. At first, I saw it as all brown, but now that I’ve been here a few months, I see the color in the browns. The textures. The greens of the sahuaros, the glow of their spines at sunset—like a halo of light surrounding the giant cacti. There are wildflowers in autumn. And fruit on the cacti.
And now that the excruciating heat of summer is past, there’s something cleansing about the sun. Like it will burn off all the shit in my life and make it new again.
We drive all the way to the top of the mountain, and I nearly kill us trying to park it. Not really, but Bo had to put his feet down and grab the handlebars to keep me from dumping it.
“Good job, Legs. You did it.”
I hop on one leg to dismount and turn to face him. “I did.” Despite everything we’ve been through and still face, I can’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. “Thank you.”
He takes me into his arms and just holds me there.
For once, the charge of sexual tension is absent. Or at least diminished. There’s a sweetness to the way he holds me. Like he, too, knows this is our last day together.
That we should savor these small moments.
I don’t know how long we stand there. It’s a while.