Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
I didn’t have to look at the woman to know that Ariya had finally noticed her.
The two had never gotten along. Which was surprising since Ariya’s father had been a youth pastor for Hennessy’s father.
“Yes, it is,” I muttered without moving.
“God, what is she wearing?”
Jeans and a t-shirt.
“What’s wrong with what she’s wearing?” I questioned.
“Her pants are too tight. I can see a roll of fat over the top. Muffin top, anyone?”
I knew the ‘roll of fat’ she was speaking of, and it was more than a pinch, and that was only because she was sitting down, as well as leaning forward in her chair, as she spoke adamantly with her friend, Krisney.
“And God, hasn’t anyone told her that if she’s going to wear a white tank, that she should make sure it’s not completely see through?”
I gave Ariya a jaded look, then pointedly looked down at her top.
“I can see the top of your bra over your tank,” I told her. “What’s it matter if I can see her bra through her shirt?”
Ariya smiled, liking the fact that I’d noticed her bra, and bared her teeth in a predatory smile.
I would’ve found that enticing at one point in time. Now I wanted to lick the guacamole that’d fallen off of Hennessy’s chip onto the front of her white shirt.
I started to chuckle under my breath when she growled, and then pulled the shirt up to her mouth and licked the offending goo off.
The move exposed her belly, and her adorable little roll on the top of her pants had me wanting to bite that, too.
“Are you even listening to me?”
I turned to find Ariya staring at me, and then looking back over at where Hennessy now had her shirt back in place.
“You have the hots for her, don’t you?”
I shrugged. There was no use in denying it.
I’d always had a thing for her, even if it’d been borderline creepy when we were younger.
“That’s kind of sad, Tate,” Ariya curled her lip at me. “You know who her father is. You know what she did.”
I nearly rolled my eyes.
Ariya was speaking about when they were in high school, and Hennessy had accidentally bumped into Ariya, causing her to spill hot wax from two candles all over her hands, and lower stomach.
Why Ariya had the candles, I didn’t know. But it’d been before a service that I’d been forced to attend, so I’d been there when Ariya had cried and screamed that Hennessy had done it on purpose, when in reality it’d been an accident on both of their parts.
However, Hennessy’s father had taken her into the back room, and then proceeded to beat the shit out of her with a belt.
Not one single person had intervened, and by the time I’d realized what was going on, I’d only been in time to walk into the room to see tears of pain rolling down Hennessy’s face, and Hennessey’s father repositioning his belt back around his hips.
I’d hated him from that moment on.
The feeling had also been mutual.
She hadn’t screamed.
What I knew then, as well as now, showed how strong she actually was.
I sat back as the server brought my food, and winked at her when she didn’t so much as stutter when she spoke with me about the kitchen staff taking too long.
And as I tasted my first bite of the tacos, I realized why Hennessy had moaned each and every time she’d taken a bite.
It was fan-fucking-tastic.
Chapter 7
Get a fixer upper, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. They were liars. Fixing an old house up fucking sucks.
-Tate’s secret thoughts
Tate
“Remind me again why I said I’d take this place?” I asked Baylor.
Baylor looked over at me with amused eyes.
“Because it was free?”
I snorted and turned my eyes back to the dilapidated house.
“It’s a piece of shit,” I muttered.
“It is a piece of shit,” Baylor agreed. “But it’s your piece of shit.”
He handed over the keys, and I took them, making my way up the front walk.
The porch groaned underneath my weight.
I winced and kept going, ignoring the way the wood creaked with each additional step I took.
I turned and surveyed the porch.
The house itself was built in the nineteen hundreds. It was a two-story monster with over ten rooms. The house itself needed work…a lot of work. There were places in it where I could see straight through the walls to the outside. It was built on pier and beam, and I wondered if the beams holding the house up were even whole.
With the way that the wood underneath my feet groaned with each step, I doubted it.
“May have been free,” I sighed. “But it might not be worth it to fix up.”
Baylor grunted something behind me. “Yeah, sure,” he agreed. “But the historical society will pay you to fix it up to their expectations. Not to mention if you do get it fixed up, they’ll buy it from you.”