Total pages in book: 224
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
Carrie
I’m so cold that I can’t stop shaking.
It’s ten-thirty when Reid and I are allowed back into his building, my building now, but I just can’t digest that at the moment. I’m in emotional overload, and the minute we step inside Reid’s apartment, it’s as if the wind falls from my wings. My knees are weak and my mind is exhausted. My head spins and for a moment I think I might drop. Reid seems to know this, and he scoops me up and starts walking, his strong arms and body warming me. I rest my head on his shoulder and it’s only a minute or so before we’re in his bedroom and he’s sitting me on the bed.
I kick off my shoes and just sit there on the edge of the mattress, a nightstand to my left. “My only photo of my mother was in the apartment,” I say, as Reid sits next to me and shrugs out of his jacket. “I haven’t seen her in years, but it represented a part of my life that made me who I am today.”
“I could tell you we’ll find another or find her,” he says, tossing his jacket on the bed, his hand coming down on my leg, “but I know that’s not what you want to hear. That photo had a special meaning for you.”
I cover his hand with mine. “You understand things I don’t expect you to understand.”
He kisses my hand. “I want to understand everything, Carrie.” His voice is low, gravelly, and yet warm.
I study his handsome face, searching for confirmation or perhaps a lie? Why would I search for a lie? But I know why. It’s not our parents. It’s not business or money. This man affects me, understands me, connects with me, but now, now, if I move in with him, he controls every part of my life. To allow such a thing requires vulnerability and trust. “Everything?” I ask.
“Yes.” He strokes hair from my eyes, the light touch sending goosebumps down my spine. “Everything,” he repeats. “I want to know everything about you. I want everything, Carrie.”
“Everything is so much.”
“Too much?” he asks.
The doorbell rings and his hand falls away, the moment shifting away from the intimacy of the one before it. “That’s Cat. She brought you some things.”
“She didn’t have to do that. I have enough to get by here.” I shiver and Reid walks to the closet, rather than out of the room, and returns with his big navy robe.
He stops in front of me and wraps it around my shoulders, the lines of his face harder now, tension in his voice. “I’ll be right back.” He kisses my head, a tenderness to the act that defies that tension, tenderness I’d once thought him incapable of, but it’s welcomed now. I’m strong, I am, and I’ll come back fighting tomorrow, but tonight, I just need permission to only survive.
He exits the room and I lay back on the bed, Reid’s bed that could be mine now if I say yes to moving in with him. If I say yes.
“Hello, hello!”
At the sound of Cat’s voice, I sit up, wrapping the robe more tightly around me to find the gorgeous, sweet blonde bombshell standing in the doorway with bags in her hands. “I have Chanel and much more. I know someone. She opened her store for me.”
“What? Thank you, but with what money?”
She sets the bags down and settles her hands on her jean-clad hips. “Reid’s black AmEx. He told me to spend an insane amount of money on you. He wants you to feel like you have your own things.”
“I don’t want his money.” My throat constricts. “I don’t want him to do that.” My hand goes to my throat now. “God. I don’t want to be here.”
Cat blanches. “What? You don’t want to be here?”
“No. Yes. I do. I really do.” I go back to my first reaction to Reid’s invitation for me to move in. “Not like this, though. I just don’t want to feel like I forced myself on him.”
“You didn’t. You aren’t.” She sits next to me. “That man wants you here. The way Reese wanted me with him almost immediately.”
I barely know Cat, but I like her, and I just need to say what I feel, to get it out and understand it. “I want to believe that, but our parents hate each other, and it wasn’t that long ago that Reid was an asshole to me. And then suddenly he’s becoming everything to me and it’s wonderful and scary and—he’s in control. Now, here, living with him, he has all the control and it’s terrifying.”
“You’re wrong.”
At the sound of Reid’s voice, Cat and I turn to find him standing in the doorway with his jacket, vest, and tie gone. “For the first time in my adult life,” he says, “I don’t have the control.”