Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
What I was going to do was touch her goddamn hair.
I couldn’t help myself.
I reached up and grabbed one of the strands.
It felt like silk between my fingers.
“You had a bug in your hair,” I lied, pulling my hand back like it’d been burned.
Her eyes went wide, and she immediately started to sift her fingers through her hair where I’d just touched.
“Oh my God!” she gasped. “Really? Did you get it?”
“Ladybug,” I continued to lie.
I tried to think of something that wouldn’t gross her out, but she seemed to pale even further, causing my brows to rise.
“Gross,” she whispered, then did a full, head to toe, entire body shiver.
“Ladybugs aren’t gross,” I told her, taking the next turn a little too fast, causing her to lean slightly into the passenger side door.
“Yes, they are,” she disagreed with me. “They’re really, super-duper gross.”
“Why do you say that?”
Now she had me curious.
I hated being curious.
It made me ask questions, which inevitably made me get closer to the person despite my not wanting to get closer. But sometimes my curiosity won out, and this was one of those times.
“There was this one time when my grandfather, grandmother, and I were camping.”
I nodded, urging her to continue without saying it verbally.
“Anyway, we were in the RV, and I was going to the bathroom.”
My brows rose.
“I was… you know… and I decided to do a courtesy flush.”
I blinked, and she blushed.
“Never mind.”
“You have to finish it now.”
I didn’t know where she was going with this, but she had my interest piqued.
She shrugged, then continued as if what she was saying wasn’t the least bit embarrassing. Only her blush betrayed her and made her freckles stand out even more starkly on her face.
“I flushed, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an RV before, but it’s gravity fed. You push a lever on the base of the toilet, and the hole opens, letting the stuff fall through.”
I nodded in understanding. I knew exactly what she was talking about.
Lily and I had an RV… I viciously shut those thoughts down.
I couldn’t think about my wife right now.
Not when I was trying to appear normal and sane.
“Anyway, so I flushed, and I don’t know if the ladybugs had somehow gotten into the tank or what, but the moment that I opened the hole, a swarm of them came out from the tank below and went everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean all over my lady bits. When I stood up, they just kept coming. They swarmed the room, I had to slap them off my junk. It was god awful.”
I couldn’t help it.
I laughed.
It sounded rusty like the sound was being pulled out of a rarely used squeaking door, but it was a laugh, nonetheless.
It actually felt kind of good.
I could just see her, screeching and hollering, as she tried to get ladybugs off of her pussy.
“I’m still traumatized,” she said. “One even bit me on one of my petals.”
“Your petals.” I grinned.
She nodded. “My petals.”
I rolled my eyes.
“That sucks, honestly,” I said. “But I guess it could’ve been worse.”
“How?” she challenged.
My brows dipped low. “It could’ve been a wasp nest in there. Just imagine being stung on your ‘petals’ by one of those.”
Her eyes went wide. “Dear God. That’s sick! You’re sick. I could’ve died! Now I’ll never be able to go to the bathroom in an RV again!”
I just shook my head and returned my attention back to the road, not saying another word for the rest of the drive to our destination.
“You think I’m crazy,” she said as we pulled up to the gates of Free long minutes later. “I know you do. But it’s a fear, and most fears don’t tend to be rational.”
Some fears were rational.
But before I could argue with her, the gate swung open, and a man walked out of the office that the driveway led up to.
He had a wrench in his hand, and his eyes were narrowed on us, calculating everything in a single sweep.
Former military.
Had to be.
I pulled to a stop in the middle of the lot, seeing with my own eyes that the guy was wondering why I was there.
I was driving a company tow truck, and it was quite obvious that I had no reason for being where I was.
“Can I help you?”
Maybe calling would’ve been the better way to go.
Yet, it’d been a split-second decision, and I’d gotten the info from my brother on the way there.
Baylor had his own problems when it came to his wife, and they had led to his own trip to this same place to ask his own questions.
Baylor had told me he’d asked them about Marianne, yet they wouldn’t give him anything, citing that whatever problems his wife, Lark, had, they looked like middle-school problems compared to Marianne’s. And I believed them. Now.