Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 85484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
“Nothing has changed between us,” she says. “I’m still madly in love with you. I still want things to be the same. I’m just saying that I have this apartment and—”
“No, what you’re saying is you want to keep an out.”
I wait for her to argue with me. She doesn’t.
“Have you not listened to anything I’ve said over the past week?” I ask her. “You think you need to keep a way out of a relationship with me?”
“I don’t mean it like that,” she says, her eyes widening.
“I don’t care how you mean it. That’s what it is. We both know it.”
“I’m trying to be practical.”
“You don’t trust me.”
She sighs. “I know you’re disappointed. And I’m sorry—”
“Stop it.” My frustration begins to seep into anger as I see the trauma inflicted on her by her parents emerge. “I’m disappointed. Yeah, I am. But not in you.”
Her chest rises and falls so much that I can see it from across the room.
“And don’t apologize to me for this—for any of it,” I say, emotions battling inside me. “You feel what you feel. But don’t use me being disappointed to justify your fear. You don’t get to think I’m disappointed in you, so it’s okay to let the fear ball start rolling down the hill.”
She grips the back of a chair.
“I’m disappointed in your parents. I’m disappointed in your brother. I’m disappointed in every man, every person who you’ve met along the way who has encouraged you to think that you should always keep a way out.”
Tears fill her eyes. “I can’t help it.”
My heart splits into two pieces. The contents spill across the floor with the mixing bowls and measuring cups.
“Can I just have a minute?” She takes a napkin off the table and wipes her nose with it. “I’m sorry, Jess. I’m so sorry. My head is just spinning, and I don’t know what to do. I do trust you. I love you. I love you so much.” Her voice breaks. “But something in my head keeps screaming at me that I’m going too fast and I’m not looking at the big picture.”
I have to earn her trust. It’s the only way to show her this is different—we are different. “What are you asking me for?”
“Space. Just a little bit,” she says. “Just for a little while.”
I force a swallow and breathe deep. “You want space? I’ll give you space. I told you I’ll always give you what you want.”
Tears flow down her cheeks.
I walk over to her and pull the box out of my pocket. I open it, take out the two black bands, and then set the box on the counter.
“When my mom told me about this, I thought she had something else in mind.” I grin sadly at the memory as I pick up Pippa’s hand. I lace my fingers through hers, watching our connection. “But this turned out better.”
I slip the band over her wrist and fasten it.
“What’s this?” she asks, inspecting it.
I put the other on my wrist and then tap it. The small circle on her wrist lights up, and it vibrates.
“Every time I think of you, I’ll tap that,” I say.
Her bottom lip quivers.
I hold her face in my hands and press my lips to her forehead. My eyes close, and the deepest breath exhales from my lungs.
This will work out. It has to.
I kiss her again and then step away. “All right. I’m going to go because you asked me to.”
The words kill me to say. She flinches as she absorbs them.
Tell me to stay, and I won’t go.
I give her a minute to speak—to tell me she doesn’t want me to leave—but she doesn’t.
“See ya later,” I say and head to the door.
I wait for her voice. It never comes.
Tears fill my eyes as soon as I get in my truck. I give her apartment a long look before flicking my bracelet … and pulling away.
29
JESS
“How many T-shirts does one man need?”
I pull a tote out from under a shelf in my closet. Sitting on the floor in the middle of the walk-in, I sort through a stack of shirts I didn’t know I still owned. I thought Banks ran off with all of these.
On his five-foot-seven frame.
Despite my bleak mood, I chuckle.
Cleaning out my closet isn’t something I thought I’d be doing at ten o’clock on a Friday night. But being here alone wasn’t what I thought I’d be doing either. And that whole thing pisses me off.
Fuck her parents. Fuck her brother. Fuck them all.
How can people be so selfish and self-centered to make a person afraid to fall in love? How is that a thing? And how did Pippa turn out to be such a warmhearted woman after being raised in that toxicity?
I pause, holding a blue shirt in my hand. Because she’s amazing.