Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72669 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72669 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
But him.
He never came.
My eyes fell on Aaron. His best friend since he was in fourth grade.
“What’s going on?” I asked Aaron.
His eyes were cold.
“Why do you care?” He snapped.
I stepped back at the harshness in his voice.
It was more than evident that Aaron wasn’t happy with me.
“I…I…” I closed my eyes. “I need him.”
Aaron laughed.
It sounded hideous and wrong. Not the Aaron I was used to.
“You need him?” Aaron asked. “Well that was more than obvious when you broke up with him in the middle of his fucking deployment.”
A tear slipped out of my eye.
“I didn’t mean it,” I said. “I didn’t mean it.”
Aaron’s hand touched me lightly on the cheek.
“Well, he thought you meant it. And that’s why he’s currently trying to kill himself,” Aaron said bluntly.
“What?” I gasped, grabbing onto his hand in desperation.
Aaron looked down at me with cool eyes.
Not the same ones that used to look at me with laughter and happiness when he saw me with his best friend.
“He stayed,” he said. “The unit that replaced us lost their medic to an IED the first day they were there,” he swallowed. “Booth volunteered to stay.”
My mouth gaped open.
“He did what?” I whispered in agony.
Aaron nodded and pulled his hand away from mine.
“You broke him, baby girl,” he said. “Now you get to watch while he tries every trick in the book not to leave that place alive.”
I sat down heavily on the first chair that I could, watching Aaron’s back as he hurried away.
My mind was all the way across the world, though.
With Booth.
With the man that I’d broken.
I dropped my head and stared at my shoes.
You broke him, baby girl. Now you get to watch while he tries every trick in the book not to leave that place alive.
***
2 years later
Twenty years old
I wasn’t dressed well.
I was in sweat pants, a long sleeved t-shirt of Booth’s, and flip flops.
My hair was a ragged mess that needed washed three days ago.
I’d just taken my nursing final and was walking to my car from the school when I looked up and saw him.
Booth.
I hadn’t seen him in two years.
He’d done everything he could to ignore me.
In fact, this was the first time I’d seen him in all that time.
Even though I’d called him. Wrote him letters.
I was pretty sure his mom hated me.
Not that she’d ever treat me unfairly.
But I could see it in her eyes.
She blamed me for her son not coming home.
So it was unbelievable that he was currently standing in front of me, leaning against my Jeep.
My heart started to pound, and my breathing started to come in panicky breaths.
My feet itched to run towards him.
I came to a stop two parking spaces away from him.
He watched me.
I watched him.
Neither of us spoke.
Then he opened his arms, and I started running.
I hit him with the full force of my body, slamming into him so hard that he went back a step into the Jeep’s door.
My arms wrapped around his neck as my legs circled his hips.
One of his hands went to my ass while the other arm banded tightly around my lower back.
Raucous calls rose around us, but I didn’t pay them any mind as I buried my face into the skin of his neck and cried.
This was two years past due.
And I had not gotten over him.
Not even a little bit.
“Come home with me,” I whispered into his neck.
He growled and opened my Jeep door with practiced ease, pushing me over to the passenger side as he got into the driver’s side.
He started the Jeep after I handed him the keys, and we drove to my place in silence.
I didn’t bother asking him how he knew where I lived.
The man was Booth, after all.
All he had to do was ask his brother…my mother…or his mother for that matter.
Oh hell, anyone in town.
I watched him shift the Jeep. Watched the muscles in his arms flex and bunch.
His jaw was set tight, and he hadn’t said a word.
I closed my eyes and reached for his hand.
He clasped mine tight the moment our skin met.
He drove like that all the way to my apartment, even going as far as to pull into my driveway.
I got out, unsurprised to find him leading the way.
And the moment we got over the threshold of my apartment, he was on me.
Two years of sexual frustration exploded out from both of us.
Mouths collided. Skin was scratched.
Teeth clicked.
I closed my eyes as arousal bombarded me like a sledgehammer to the stomach.
Booth’s hands trailed down my back, skimming over the softness of his t-shirt, then dipped down into my pants without the slightest bit of hesitation.
“Take me,” I urged.
His hands went to my pants, yanking them down my legs all the while holding me aloft with his powerful upper body, pinning me between him and the door.