Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
He kept thrusting, my body jolting, before he shoved his face in my neck and groaned, “Raye.”
At my name on his lips, and him emptying himself into me, my sex rippled around his still-driving cock.
Eventually, he buried himself inside me, slid his finger from my clit and wrapped that arm around me. His face still in my neck, some of his weight in his other forearm, we lay connected and quiet as we came down.
Now, that was what I’d been waiting for.
“Fifteen years,” he murmured into my skin.
“Sorry, honey?” I asked, smoothing his hair back, then his shoulders, his lats, my legs now wrapped around his ass.
He lifted his head and gazed down at me.
“All the guys at the shelter loved Jules. She’s gorgeous. Christ. Unbelievable. She could be a model or a movie star.”
My hands stilled, then, as I sensed what he was doing, I curled my arms around him and held on.
Cap kept talking.
“But it was more. She was fierce. We all knew she’d go to the mat for us, every one of us. Anything she could do to make our lives better, to take away pain, to prompt healing. Getting us to work with the tutors. Sitting and rapping with us. And in the end, taking to the streets to keep the dealers away from the runaways, so what happened to Park wouldn’t happen to another kid.”
Oh yeah.
Jules was a badass.
I moved my hands to smooth his face and whispered, “Honey.”
“A lot of us had never had that. Nothing like it. It was like being in a golf cart then suddenly finding yourself on a rocket. A lot of us also had our trust broken so bad, it felt like we’d never get that back. But she was always there, seeing everything, caring about it all. She was like a shooting star, bright and brilliant and streaking through our lives, lighting up the darkness we lived in, but she did it in a way where that beauty just never died.”
In our activities, some of his hair had fallen on his forehead, but it didn’t make him look boyish.
He’d had the boy chased out of him early.
I felt that in my soul as I tried to smooth it back, but it just fell forward again.
So I left it and kept listening.
“Park had a huge crush on her. I did. Think even Roam did, but he’d never admit it. Everyone did.”
“I can imagine,” I murmured when he stopped speaking. “She sounds incredible.”
“She is. But then Sadie came along, and I thought, for me, it was going to be someone like her. I needed that vulnerability I could protect, that fracture I could work to heal, and if I couldn’t heal it, bust my ass to hold her together so she didn’t fly apart. It was the man I was going to become. The man Jules started forming, the man Shirleen cast in iron. It was me.”
Oh yeah.
I knew what he was saying.
The tears threatened to come back as I ran my thumbs over his cheekbones.
“Jules was a force of nature. She was about fierce love. But Shirleen wasn’t about tough love. She was just about love. And not the making-up-for-lost-time kind. She didn’t try to smother us or buy us or any of that shit. She was just steady. Solid. A parent. We got our homework done or she got on our asses. We got good grades or she didn’t hide her disappointment. She didn’t like us to waste our time with too much TV or videogames, so she made us read or go out and do shit. She let us fuck up, and sometimes that meant a lecture. Sometimes, she let us learn on our own. And every day, the house was filled with groceries. So much food, all the time. When you’re on the street, you don’t know when you’re gonna eat next. Shirleen’s kitchen was always filled with food.”
God, all he’d been through.
I tightened my legs around him.
“Sometimes she’d touch us, just to straighten a collar or pull our backpacks up on our shoulder. Love has a feel, Raye. You know that when you’ve never had it. So you know it when you get it. And she touched with love. Not fawning all over us and covering us with kisses and hugs. She gave us space. But when there was touch, it was all about love. She’d never had a kid, but she was so fuckin’ plugged into what we needed, it was fuckin’ unreal.”
It was really, really hard not to let the tears flow.
But if I did, I might miss something.
So I didn’t let them flow.
Instead, I whispered, “I love that.”
“She got Hank to talk to us about becoming-a-man shit. She didn’t go there. But from zero to thirteen, my life was straight up hell. From thirteen to fifteen, it was uncertain, finding my way on the streets, keeping clear of the dealers and other elements that would use kids for things that would alter them permanently. Park and Roam found me, Jules came with them. And then from fifteen to now I’ve had nothing but steady. Solid. Stable. But I watched the men. I knew what I wanted when it was time for me to have it.”