Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 91937 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91937 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“A passing thing?” It’s almost a whisper.
“Stop fucking repeating everything I’m saying!” I shout and take a step, but then I feel like I have something stuck on the bottom of my foot so I limp. “Now, if you can please just go back to your house and your”—I don’t even know what to call her—“friend and leave me be.”
“No,” he snaps, and this time, I’m the one who almost growls. “What’s wrong with your foot?”
“Nothing,” I quickly fire back. “Brady, seriously. You have a friend who is over there, and you should go back to her.”
“No one is over there,” he declares, and I look at him and then out the open door, not really seeing anything. “I had no idea she would just show up at my door.” I swallow down the bile. “We were friends.”
I hold up my hand. “I really don’t want to know.” I shake my head. “Actually, I don’t need to know. What you do with your time is your business.”
“Fuck that!” he roars. “I’m in fucking love with you.” The gasp that leaves my mouth fills the whole room. It’s so quiet you can hear dust fall from the sky.
“What?” The word barely leaves my mouth.
“Yeah.” He puts his hands on his hips. “I’m in fucking love with you,” he repeats. “I’ve never in my life said that to a woman before.” His voice goes soft. “You asked me tonight why I was single, and I told you I haven’t met the one who I want to do everyday life with, and I lied to you.” He takes a step to me. “I have met her. I’ve met her and her son, and I’ve gone and fallen completely and madly in love with both of them.” I don’t move from my spot; I don’t even think I take a breath. “You both consume me and all I can think of is the two of you. Keeping you both safe and making sure you are both okay. You walk into a room, and I swear to God, it’s like I’m complete. It’s like I wasn’t alive before you, and now I’m breathing, and it’s fucking amazing.” His thumb comes up to rub my cheek. “I love you, Harmony. I’m in love with you.”
I look down, not sure I can say what I need to say without sobbing. I breathe out through my mouth and in through my nose and look up at him. “I sort of love you too.”
He smirks at me. “Sort of?” he asks, and I sniffle, trying not to laugh.
“Yeah,” I confirm, and he bends his forehead to mine. “Sort of.”
“I’m sorry about Taylor showing up,” he says softly. “I wish that never happened.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not fucking okay,” he snaps, making me laugh. “It’s never going to be fucking okay.”
“How was she supposed to know?” I ask.
“Tomorrow, everyone knows,” he states, and I stare at him, not sure what he means by that. “We make it known we’re together.”
“Brady,” I murmur, and he bends and picks me up in his arms—one arm under my arms, the other under my knees. He takes a step and then bends to grab my purse before walking out of the house. Slamming the door behind us as he carries me back to his house. “I could have walked,” I mumble to him as he walks up the front steps, his door wide open.
“Is that why you were limping?” he asks me as he walks into the house and goes straight to the kitchen, setting me down on a stool. He picks up my foot, then turns his glare at me. “You have thorns in the bottom of your feet.” He turns and walks out of the room to the bathroom. I grab my foot, looking down and seeing four of them sticking out. That might have been the pain I felt as I walked back to the house. He walks into the room with a first-aid kit. “Are you happy with yourself?” He glares at me as he takes out the tweezers from the bag. “None of this would have happened if you would have stayed where you should have stayed.”
“I will have you know, Brady,” I hiss as he pulls one out of my foot, making it burn a bit more, “it’s not the first time I’ve opened the door to unwanted guests.” His eyes shoot up to mine so quickly, it takes my breath away. “Except this time, it hurt a lot more.”
He doesn’t say a word after that. Instead, he takes the three thorns out, walks over to the sink, wetting a cloth, and comes back to clean my feet. Only when he’s wiped them down, puts clear ointment on, and then covers them with Band-Aids does he turn to me. “I’m not Winston,” he declares. “Someone will never be showing up at my door because I’ve stepped out on you. Because that isn’t the man I am. It’s not the man my father raised and”—he zips up the first-aid kit bag—“that is not the man I want Wyatt to be.”