Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“What?” He pulled away, glancing me over.
“Don’t analyze the hell out of them!” I covered my ears, embarrassed at the way he was checking me out.
His forehead scrunched up. “What in the world made you think to do that?”
I rested the pack of deli meat in my lap. “I didn’t like them, so I changed them. Is it that weird?”
“No, I’m just surprised I didn’t know it before.”
“You can thank Dr. Johnson for that,” I joked. “But it’s not exactly something I wear a shirt saying. And I did it forever ago, in my early twenties. Money well spent, I should add.”
He thought on it as he stacked a slice of bread on top of the sandwich he’d made for himself. “I definitely don’t have any complaints about what it looks like, but can I ask what made you decide you needed to do that?”
I understood why he asked. Whenever the subject came up, I wasn’t surprised anymore by people’s curiosity. “I know what people’s perception of cosmetic surgery is. That only vapid people do it and we always become horribly addicted because we hate ourselves or whatever. But I don’t get it. As RuPaul says, ‘We’re born naked and the rest is drag.’ We only live once, and changing a nose doesn’t change me as a person any more than getting braces to straighten teeth does, so I don’t see the reason not to look how I want. And I love my new nose. Well, at this point, my very old nose.”
I wondered if he was judging me, as people sometimes did when they discovered the truth behind my appearance, but he smiled. “You’re one in a million, Carter.”
“You don’t disapprove or think less of me?” I knew the moment I asked that it was the real reason I’d told him. I wanted to tell Sawyer things not many people knew, but I also hoped he wouldn’t judge me. I felt vulnerable, more than usual, and it was unsettling. There were plenty of people who would have judged me, and Sawyer didn’t necessarily seem like the type to ever have any cosmetic surgery himself.
He assessed my expression. “Not much about this face to disapprove of,” he joked before turning serious again. “It’s just a surprise, more than anything, but it’s your body. And hell, Cam had braces to straighten his teeth, so like you said, what’s the difference, really? But I am curious to know what Carter’s old nose looked like.”
I made like I was about to vomit. “Gross. I would like to keep you as far away from my old face as I can. Just be appreciative that you don’t have to endure that sight. I basically did you a preemptive favor by getting the work done before meeting you.”
“I’m sure your old nose wasn’t that bad.”
“That’s true,” I confessed. “The ears were much worse.”
Sawyer rolled his eyes as he passed the plate with my sandwich to me.
“I’m not kidding. They called me Dumbo in middle school.”
“What?”
I raised my hands to my ears and fanned them out. “This is a glimpse into what I looked like before.”
“Now you’re just being overdramatic.”
“No, at one of the schools I went to, I swear on my life, that was what they called me.”
He continued laughing, clearly not believing me at all. “Oh, Carter, you might be the last person in the world I ever thought I’d be…”
His words trailed off, like he couldn’t finish his thought, and now I was eager to hear where he was going with that.
“Going on a picnic with,” I said, offering him an out.
“No,” he said sternly, decisively. “Falling for.”
My heart sped up as goose bumps pricked across my flesh. That same rush I’d felt earlier radiated through me, so much more intensely than before. It was a vulnerability—something that any other man admitting to me would have made me uneasy, but it was a relief to hear it from him. Because I felt that way about him too. However, nice as it was, it set off every alarm within me.
“You look concerned.”
I picked at the crust on my sandwich. “Maybe because I am.”
“I guess we’re both concerned about the same thing. You have a tricky job, but really, the fact that you’ve been heading off to different places recently keeps me realizing how much more I miss you each time you leave. Getting to know you has been…well, similar to how we were at first. You irritated me to the point where it drove me crazy. It’s the same thing, because the more I like you, the more it drives me out of my mind, but I don’t really want it to stop.”
“I know the feeling. I don’t ever do anything like this, Saw. I mean, dates. Fucking around, yes, but the rest… Or maybe just the way I feel about it isn’t the same. And the more time I spend with you, the worse it seems to get.”