Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 113923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
She’d understand. Maybe even get a kick out of it. We’d have a good laugh and it’d become a funny story we tell at parties.
Or she’d never talk to me again, until I come home one day to my house on fire and a sign stuck in the ground with We should see other people written on it in ash.
“Don’t mess with me.” Mac sticks a finger in my chest. “What was he talking about? You two know each other?”
Once again, we have an audience, and once again, feeling our friends’ eyes on us, my courage abandons me. If I tell her the truth in private, there’s a chance I’ll lose her. If I tell her the truth in front of a dozen other people, losing her is a guarantee. She’d be humiliated in front of everyone. She’d never forgive me.
This time, the lies burn my tongue. “Everything I know about him I heard around town, or from you. Couldn’t have picked that guy out of a lineup.”
She becomes eerily still, barely breathing as she stares at me.
Panic churns in my gut, but on the outside I maintain a neutral expression. I stick to my story. I learned a long time ago, those who get caught are the ones who break. The key to a successful lie is to believe it. Then deny, deny, deny.
“Was there a fight?” Mac cocks her head as if she’s trapped me.
“Mac, they could fill football stadiums with the number of idiots who get drunk and start shit. If he was one of them, I honestly wouldn’t remember.”
Visibly frustrated, she turns to Evan. “Did Cooper really get fired?”
For a split second, I worry their new platonic romance might end me.
“He had a summer job at Steph’s bar.” With a shrug, Evan even has me convinced. Guess we’re still on the same side when it counts. “It was temporary.”
She looks past Evan to where Steph has resettled in her chair and picked up her book. “Steph?” Mac says. “Is that true?”
Without looking up from her book, Steph nods behind her thick black sunglasses. “It was a summer gig.”
Relief trickles into me, then dissolves when I notice Heidi edging closer to the group. There’s indecision in her expression.
Fuck.
I know that look. Mischief for mischief’s sake. Heidi’s the girl who’s never missed an opportunity to set a fire just to hear the screams. Add to this the fact that she’s been mad at me more often than not lately, and that she’s not a fan of this arrangement or Mac. But when our gazes briefly meet, I silently plead with her to give me this one thing.
“Seriously, guys, I’m starved,” she says with a bored whine. “Can we get the hell out of here already?”
By the skin of my teeth, I make it out alive.
Every day after that, I’m holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Looking over my shoulder for Kincaid to sneak up on us again. Mac seems to let the matter go, and Evan and I have been avoiding the subject by miles. But it was a close call. Too close. A reminder how fragile our relationship is and how easily it can all be ripped from my hands. That realization hits me harder than I thought possible. She’s under my skin and getting deeper.
The night of our run-in with Kincaid, after Mac had gone to bed, I ended up in my workshop sucking on a cigarette like a madman, hoping the nicotine would ease the guilt, the stress, the fear. Usually, I only smoke when I’m drinking, and even that isn’t a hard and fast rule. But lying to Mackenzie had wrecked me.
Evan found me there at one in the morning, nearly half a pack’s worth of cigarette butts in the ashtray on my worktable.
“I need to tell her the truth,” I’d said miserably.
He’d balked. “Are you fucked? What’s that gonna achieve, man? The plan was aborted. You’re with her because you like her.”
“But it started as a way to get back at Kincaid. Me and her, this whole relationship, was founded on bad intentions.”
In the end, Evan convinced me to stay quiet. Though who am I kidding, it didn’t take much convincing. The thought of losing Mackenzie rips my insides to shreds. I can’t lose her. And Evan was wrong—I’m not with her because I like her.
I’m in love with her.
And so I banish the guilt to the furthest recesses of my mind. I work hard to be the kind of man Mac needs, deserves. And then, one morning, we’re lying in bed and I take my first deep breath in almost a month. She’s barely awake when she rolls over and drapes her leg over my hip. An overwhelming sense of calm I’ve never known before envelopes me as she cuddles into my chest.