Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
“You’re not answering my question,” she grumbled.
I sighed. “I’m a bad bet, babe.”
“You’re not a bad bet. You’re a kid,” she corrected me. “You’ve only been told you’re bad, so you believe it.”
I snorted. “You keep telling yourself that, Curly Fry.”
“Curly Fry?” she asked. “Very original.”
I reached out and touched a curl that’d strayed close to her eyes and tucked it back behind her ear.
“I like your hair.”
Why had I said that?
“That’s nice, because it’s my hair, and I can’t change it. I’ve tried straightening it before, but within an hour the curl is back. I have my dad to thank for my curly hair,” she admitted.
I was glad that it was curly.
Everybody always straightened their hair. All the fake bottle-blonde popular girls looked the same with their flat-ironed hair. It was rare to see a girl with her hair anything other than straight.
Since apparently that was ‘popular.’
Whatever.
I liked a little originality.
“Now, this is the fastest way to school, but sometimes that gate is locked. If it’s locked, you have to go the long way around like you did yesterday,” she said. “This way cuts off about ten minutes, but you have to walk through a grassy field. But a lot of the times the field is wet thanks to the dew in the morning. That’s why I wear these rubber boots and change if I care what I’m wearing. Today, it’s supposed to rain anyway, so I’ll just keep them on.”
I looked at her boots and only then realized what she was wearing.
I’d been too focused on her hair, her body, her face, those kissable lips, and those honey-sun-colored eyes.
But now that I was looking, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking how cute she looked in them.
“If you weren’t wearing boots, I would’ve taken you the long way. It sucks to have wet feet all day,” she admitted.
Just as she said that, a flash of white caught my eye.
I narrowed my eyes, then started to run.
I made it to my brother’s side just in time to intercept the punch a big motherfuckin’ jock was aiming at his face.
I pushed him hard out of the way, and he went stumbling because he wasn’t expecting it.
Then I hauled my brother up to his feet and looked him in the eyes.
“You okay, East?” I asked.
Easton blinked.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “I’m okay. Watch out!”
I threw an elbow out and took the guy in the sternum.
“Don’t fuck with me,” I ordered the big fucker. “I’ve trained for my entire life in Jiu-Jitsu. I could take you down so fast and hard you wouldn’t even see it coming.”
And I had.
Up until my dad died last year, he’d forced me to.
I’d never been appreciative until this year when my father died, and I had to become Easton’s protector.
Easton, my scrawny little bookworm brother that could solve a Rubik’s cube in thirty seconds, but couldn’t throw a punch to save his life.
“You should probably back off, Acer,” I heard Beckham’s voice sound from behind me. “He means it. And he lives next door to us. My dad will notice if he has any bruising from fighting and ask him about it.”
Now that stopped ‘Acer’ flat.
“Fuck you,” Acer growled, then stalked off.
I rolled my eyes and then turned back to my brother.
“What the fuck?” I asked. “What happened there?”
Easton sighed and pushed a hand through his hair.
“I was walking, man. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and ran right into him. It was my fault,” he grumbled.
I sighed. “Seriously, Easton. Pull your head out of your book every once in a while and pay attention to your surroundings. That’s going to come back and bite you in the ass one of these days.”
Easton flipped me off, and with a muttered ‘thanks’ he walked off, not bothering to look back.
“So you have a brother living with you?” the girl who’d stayed at my side asked curiously.
I looked over at her to see her studying Easton’s rapidly departing back.
“No,” I grumbled. “Easton’s mom is in the military. She was overseas, and Easton was staying with my father. Then my father died, and now he’s back with his mother, who was able to retire from the military. In the beginning, before we knew if she could come home or not, I had started the emancipation process in the hopes that Easton could live with me, but they wouldn’t allow me to ‘keep’ him.”
Beckham frowned. “That sucks.”
“It does,” I agreed. “But it is what it is. Where’s the office? I have to go get my schedule.”
She took me to the office and stayed with me long enough to show me where my first class was, then hauled ass to her own class.
The rest of the day was spent bored as hell.
Unlike what I looked like, I was smart. That meant that all of these classes that I was attending—honors English, Calculus, and all of the other ‘smart’ classes I could get my hands on, weren’t something that most people could not pay attention in.