Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 85453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Cash is lying on top of the bedding. His beanie is pulled down over his eyes, he’s clutching an empty bottle of whiskey, and snoring like a trooper.
While grinning about the email Eden shoved in my face the morning after Cash walked me home for the first time, I scoop down to collect my backpack from the floor. Cash suggested she bring home headphones before reminding her that a shared dorm is exactly that—shared.
I loved that he stood up for me even with us only just becoming friends.
I’m scared to within an inch of my life when my wrist is snagged in a firm grip, and I’m yanked forward. But before a single pop of noise can escape my mouth, Cash’s grip loosens and his nostrils flare. “Einstein?” After pulling up his beanie so it sits high on his head, his bloodshot eyes rake my face before slowly gliding down my body. “What are you doing here?”
“I forgot my backpack…” While dropping my eyes in the direction he’s staring, I stop talking. The scratch on my leg is visible, and just like earlier, Cash acts as if I’m about to lose my leg.
The soup I gurgled down before bed sloshes in my stomach when he scoops me into his arms and gallops down the stairs. He bypasses his frat brothers in the living room and makes a beeline for the kitchen, groaning when he realizes the first-aid kit is still out.
For a person who is clearly intoxicated, he barely sways while fishing iodine out of the cupboard above the refrigerator and soaking a cotton gauze pad with it. It alters his scent so much I wouldn’t have known he was drunk if I hadn’t spotted the empty bottle in his hand.
My eyes bulge when he stuffs the knuckle of his index finger into my mouth before demanding I bite down.
“I’m not going to bite you,” I mumble over his finger. “It doesn’t hurt—”
“Bite!” he screams, scaring me for the second time.
My teeth dig into the leathery skin on his finger when he drags the iodine-soaked cloth over my scratch. It burns. Not enough to need a gag, but it is achy, nonetheless.
Once half my thigh is stained with yellow liquid, Cash removes his finger from my mouth, then fetches a Band-Aid out of the first-aid kit.
My heart slithers to my gut when the removal of the first protective strip comes with a confession, “I told him if he didn’t keep the wound clean, he’d lose his leg.” He laughs as if he’s saying something funny. “He didn’t listen.” He pulls off the second strip before lining up the Band-Aid with my scratch. “If he had listened to begin with, he wouldn’t have been in the car with her that night. He would have been with me. Two spots back. Nowhere near that fucking tree.” I hiss when he presses down on my thigh a little firmer than necessary. “But he went with her, and now I’m meant to live his life.”
While recalling a saying my father always said to me when I got upset that I didn’t go to school like normal children, I quote, “You don’t have to live anyone’s life bar your own.”
Cash locks his glassy eyes with mine, the silence almost deafening.
Learning someone I’ve been crushing on for years isn’t close to who I thought they were should scare me from speaking my mind, but the absolute desperation in his eyes to be freed of guilt keeps me talking. “It was his choice, Cash.”
“It was,” he agrees, slightly slurring.
“Then why are you taking the blame for it?”
I don’t know if my question knocks him back two spots or the alcohol trekking through his veins. “I’m not. I am just… I…” He huffs then confesses, “I don’t want to be him either.” He could still be talking about our first unnamed tormentor, but the way he said ‘him’ this time around was different. “I love him as much as he does the Nutbush, but I don’t want to be him. I don’t want to be used.” Sparks of the Cash I’ve been wrangling the past three and a bit weeks form before my eyes when a cocky grin notches one side of his mouth high. “Unless I’m being used by you… I think I could handle that.”
His underhanded compliment soars my ego, but I keep my excitement at bay—almost. “I think you’re drunk.”
A tingling sensation I’ve never experienced before meeting Cash ignites between my legs when he murmurs, “But I still think you’d let me.”
I arch a brow as if the innuendo in his tone didn’t send goose bumps racing to the surface of my skin. “Let you do what?”
When he weaves his fingers through my hair and balances his forehead on mine, I close my eyes and search for his familiar scent choked under years of controversy.