Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
I can’t see him, but I feel his smile.
I’m glad he’s happy. I am far from it. I haven’t felt another person’s presence in my family home at this time of the year for over three years. Although annoyed at how he arrived, it was nice having something else to focus on than my grief and near homelessness.
“Angel—”
“Goodbye, Christian.” I move away from the door. “Have fun at the fair,” I add, hopeful he is a man of his word.
I wish I could display the same integrity. I don’t trust my motives at this time of the year, but it has been even worse this week.
It is a struggle to walk away, and it isn’t a battle I win.
I barely get two steps away when my wrist is grabbed, and I’m yanked out of my apartment.
What the?
I can only stare in bewilderment when Christian retaliates to my eviction in a way I never considered. After closing my hanging-open apartment door and tugging out the key I forgot he had, he stuffs it into his mouth and swallows it.
I vocalize my shock out loud this time. “What the!”
I dive for his mouth and pry it open, seeking the key.
It is nowhere to be found.
He ate it.
“Are you damn insane? Mrs. Richler won’t issue me another key, and the locksmith’s cutoff for new jobs was three hours ago!” I stomp down my foot. “You need to bring it back up.”
Christian’s throat works through a stiff swallow before he laughs. “It’s not coming back up.”
I’m on the verge of hyperventilating. I’ve barely left my apartment in years. I learned my lesson the hard way when my attendance at my parents’ funeral saw me losing every irreplaceable possession I owned.
“Then how will we get back into my apartment?”
I use “we” on purpose, hopeful it will return him to my side of the fence. I didn’t want to oust him. I just didn’t trust myself to make it to the new year without jumping his bones. He’s the enemy. I’m not meant to look at him how I do. It just can’t be helped. His presence has reminded me that my heart didn’t die with my parents. It just had no reason to pump until now.
Christian’s smile slips as his stomach gurgles. “We wait for it to come down.” He leers like his butthole isn’t hours from being shredded by metal, before saying, “And I know the perfect place for us to do that.”
I shake my head like I’m possessed when the faint jingle of a charity Santa sounds above the frantic thump of my pulse. “Ho, ho, ho.”
“No. We can’t. I don’t do Christmas.” I get desperate when Christian tosses me onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “I can’t leave my apartment. Mrs. Richler will evict me permanently if I do. Possessions are nine-tenths of the law, so I need to stay with the minuscule possessions I have left.”
“That law doesn’t apply to property,” Christian replies, dropping my heart until it’s tangled by my hair swishing in front of his fantastic ass. It’s almost at his feet when he slingshots it back to my chest. “And you don’t need to worry about Mrs. Richler. She was invited to interview for a position she will never get with a multibillion-dollar investment company. She won’t be back for hours, so it is the perfect time for you to reacquaint yourself with the people you’ve spent the last three years fighting for.”
19
CHRISTIAN
It took me swatting Angel’s ass a handful of times to still her enough to move her from her apartment to the street outside her building, but once I got her there, she seemed to have enjoyed herself.
The children from her neighborhood know her as well as the tenants she’s been trying to assist for the past three years. They were as excited about her arrival today as they were for the fat guy in the red suit. They did crafts and played hockey on the closed-off street. A handful even managed to wrangle her into Santa’s workshop to get a joint street photo with the star of the hour.
When Angel approached, I acted like there wasn’t a No Sitting on Santa’s Lap sign pinned next to my chair. She balanced on my knee with her cheeks as red as my velvet suit.
I loved her heated response as much as I love how often her eyes have strayed my way since I ditched the Santa suit. It could be because she knows I didn’t swallow the key to her apartment—I used the old under-the-tongue before gluing it to the roof-of-your-mouth routine I learned in junior high—but my ego refuses to believe that.
She’s enjoying the festivities because I’m on the sideline, ready to be ridiculed at any moment.
Her teases this afternoon haven’t been as bad as the ones I endured last night. Don’t let her cutesy features fool you. She’s only playing nice because she’d hate to add a stack of witnesses to my testimony that she’s a bully.