Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 45063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
“I don’t have much of a social life over there.”
“What? Why?”
I remember Bryson and Adam going out together often, seeing friends, and returning with me sitting at the upstairs window, hungry for even a glimpse of him with his easy smirk and his intense demeanor.
“Work,” Bryson says gruffly, driving as the light turns green.
“Thanks for this,” I say after a pause.
I should probably just shut up. He’s probably annoyed with me for talking nonstop, but I feel I have to fill the silence, as though I’ll let a chance slip if I don’t.
This is the first time I’ve been alone with him.
“It’s no trouble,” he says. “I’m probably not the target demographic, anyway.”
“Huh?”
“For your podcast.”
“Right. No. Probably not.”
“What’s the latest episode about?”
I have to look out the window as I answer him. I have to stop gazing, drinking in every detail of his strong-featured face or the muscles of his forearms bulging through the fabric of his suit jacket, begging me to squeeze and feel how firm he is.
“Unrequited love,” I say. “What it is and how to deal with it. Stuff like that.”
“And how do you deal with it?” he asks with fresh hunger in his voice, causing me to turn back to him.
It gets me thinking about the West Coast… if he has a woman over there, somebody he wants but can’t have.
It’s crazy that Bryson could want someone else without them wanting him, but how else to explain that hunger?
Or maybe it’s Tiffany’s theory, the one she offered soon after Bryson left.
Maybe he had an affair with Eva. Or tried to.
I asked her never to say that again, but as the months passed, I wondered if there was something to that revolting idea.
“I guess I’m still trying to figure that out.”
He glances at me. I think his eyes flit to my chest and legs, but I must be imagining it.
“It sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” he says, his voice getting husky.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
It’s not much of an answer, but I can’t think of anything else to say.
“You don’t have a boyfriend?” he asks.
I laugh softly. “You sound surprised.”
He shrugs his massive, powerful shoulders. “Young women like to date.”
The vague answer makes me think he doesn’t really care. He’s just making conversation. It would be a mistake to latch onto every word, every breathy syllable, as though it meant something.
“No,” I tell him. “I don’t have a boyfriend. If I did, the love wouldn’t be unrequited, would it?”
“So there is somebody?”
He stops at another red light. This time, when he looks at me, it’s like he’s going to reach over and grab my leg. I want him to do it badly, even as I wonder what might happen afterward. Would I be up to it? Could I give him what he wants?
What he… what? He doesn’t want anything from me.
“Sort of,” I murmur. “Not really. It doesn’t matter. It would never work out.”
“Why not?” he presses.
“It just wouldn’t,” I say, folding my arms.
His eyes flit to my chest again when I do that, as if he likes what he sees.
That’s another deranged thought. Another thought I need to tame.
“Plenty of fuel for the podcast then,” he says gruffly.
He says nothing, gliding through the city as I work myself up to the question. I know I shouldn’t ask it, just as I knew every time I wrote our names and enclosed them in hearts, or I sneaked downstairs to peer through a crack in the door when he was hanging out with Adam.
My throat feels dry and tight. Somehow, I produce the words.
“What about you? Do you have anybody?”
He doesn’t answer for several seconds. His lips go tight as he glances at me. “No. I have nobody.”
“Why?” I ask.
He laughs gruffly. “That’s a complicated question.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Maybe I do,” he says.
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
He’s sensitive about the subject and pauses before he answers. It makes me think he does have somebody, but it’s uncomfortable for him to discuss.
I think about a Hollywood-beautiful woman on the West Coast. Maybe she’s married, like Eva was married.
That’s Tiffany’s idea getting into my head again. Do I really think Bryson would be capable of that?
He doesn’t respond, and soon we’re sitting outside my apartment building.
“Well, thanks for the ride,” I say, reaching for the door.
The handle sticks.
I pull it again, blushing like he’s going to judge me for not being able to open a door right away.
“Damn rental,” Bryson says.
He reaches across me, so close I could touch him.
I freeze as his face comes close to mine, his hand passing inches from my thighs. My body is buzzing all over, my sex aching, and my panties feeling super sensitive suddenly.
Opening the door, he leans away, but not before his hand rests on my thigh.
Rests on my thigh?
It didn’t happen on its own. He put it there.