Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Help what?” he asks… his voice cracking.
“You to be okay with this,” I reply gently with another squeeze to his hand. “I want you to know I’m okay with this. I want you to be, too. I think we have something, Malik, but we need to talk, okay?”
He merely gives me a nod with so much emotion written all over his face. Fear, doubt and yet… there’s one thing I decide I’ll hold on to… hope.
CHAPTER 15
Malik
I am not an indecisive man, yet I’ve vacillated on whether to go to Anna’s apartment tonight a good twenty times. I feel like I have solid reasoning as to why I should stay away, but fuck if it isn’t that kiss that has me standing outside her door right now.
But not just the physicality of the kiss. That’s not it.
I’ve kissed a lot of women in my life. From the playground when I was five to the last woman I was with just two nights before I had shipped out to Syria. I’ve kissed them in a lot of different places. Romantic kisses on a rain-drenched street to making a woman come with the power of my tongue between her legs. I’ve tasted it all with my mouth, yet what we shared in the gym today—just fucking mere hours ago—tipped my world sideways.
Scared the shit out of me, actually.
Anna almost brought me to my knees with that soft but insistent display, and I fear what else she might force me to do because I want to feel her mouth on mine again.
I remember my mother and I having a conversation many years ago when I was fourteen. Admittedly, I was a mama’s boy, and I had experienced my first broken heart. While I loved my father dearly, I could have never turned to him for solace and advice the way I could her.
My mother, Marilyn, is a speaking coach and has a way with words. I hadn’t cried over the breakup of my very first love, but it didn’t mean my heart wasn’t shredded.
I remember her saying, “Malik… take stock of how you feel right now. Remember the pain and the misery of it all. Never forget how badly you feel in this moment, for, one day, it will seem silly. There will come a day when you meet a woman who will make you feel such amazing things that you will wonder how you could ever be feeling this badly right now.”
She was talking about the proverbial soul mate people of romantic persuasions believe in. And back then, listening to her talk, she made me believe in them, too.
But then I grew up. And in all the women I had dated or been with, I’d never met one who made my first heartbreak seem silly. It doesn’t mean I obsessed about that heartbreak. Quite the contrary.
I think it goes more to the power of feeling, and I’ve never met someone who could evoke such a visceral response, pleasant or awful, good or bad.
Until Anna.
While I knew I genuinely liked her—as a coworker, friend, compatriot—I never could have guessed how deeply she’d possibly touch me.
To most, I bet it would seem a no-brainer that given the force of these feelings, I’d show up for dinner and be happy for the invitation.
But no one can understand the level of doubt I have within myself. Am I taking advantage of her? Is she truly ready for this, regardless of the self-confidence she portrays?
Most of all, can I let her walk this path with me—the man who is responsible for her husband lying cold in a grave?
I start to turn away from the door, but, to my shock, it swings open. Anna stands there, appearing beyond beautiful. She changed out of the dress she’d worn to work. Now, she has on a pair of flowing pants with a long-sleeved sweater that hangs off one shoulder. Thick, fuzzy socks adorn her feet. Her hair is piled messily on top of her head, and she’s holding a beer.
“I heard you out here pacing,” she says with a soft smile. “Watched you through the peephole for a bit—saw your indecision. Figured I’d try to lure you in with a beer.”
Christ, that’s fucking cute.
“Okay, yes,” I admit as I take the beer from her before entering the apartment. “I’m all up in my head.”
“Figured,” she replies pertly as she heads into the kitchen. I smell tomato sauce and garlic as I follow along behind.
“Where’s Avery?” I ask.
“Sleeping. Which, if you know anything about babies at all, you know… they sleep a lot. And eat. And poop.”
“But they’re damn cute,” I point out, taking a sip of my beer.
Laughing, she glances over her shoulder. “So very cute. She’s actually sleeping three-to-five-hour stretches at a time now, which definitely helps with my own beauty sleep.”