Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130380 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130380 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
North Boston University’s star running back, notorious bachelor, and number one on my people I would murder if I could get away with it list.
And now?
He’s my new roommate.
I used to think I loved him.
But that was before I hated him.
He doesn’t remember who I am, or how he made my life miserable for years. And before I unknowingly moved across the street from him, I couldn’t have cared less. I was living my life despite him and what happened that summer, chasing my dream of becoming a tattoo artist.
“The Pit,” as the university so gracefully nicknamed the house he lives in with three other football players, has served as nothing more than a pain in my ass and a constant reminder of the boy who broke my heart. Watching him parade his one-night-stands in and out of it never helped, either.
But with rent this cheap and so close to the tattoo shop, I’ve learned to ignore him — no matter how he’s tried to get under my skin.
At least, until this summer. Because when a water and mold disaster leaves me with no choice but to vacate my house, I have nowhere to go. And Leo Hernandez offers me a deal I can’t refuse.
Live at The Pit with him and the guys, free of charge, until my landlord fixes this mess.
Ignoring him was easy when I lived across the street, but in the same house, with him shirtless half the time and watching me with his cocky grin and searing gaze? It’s impossible.
Still, I have to try. I have to push him away, even when he makes it infuriatingly difficult to do so.
He’s broken my heart once.
I won’t let him do it again.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
To the girls who love
tattoos,
video games,
fucking shit up,
and hot, cocky, infuriating playboys.
This one’s for you.
Then
Mary
Asking for Halo 5 for my fifteenth birthday was the biggest mistake of my adolescent life.
First of all, my mother about fainted when I did. It was hard enough to get her to even allow me to have an Xbox with a few single-player fantasy games, and that was because she thought it was a phase I would grow out of. But asking for an Xbox Live subscription and a game I could play with people around the world where our main goal was to kill each other?
My poor mother didn’t know what to do with that.
“What about cheerleading? What about hanging out with your friends, shopping at the mall, boys?” She’d asked each question more frantically than the last, all the hope dwindling in her eyes.
Fortunately, I had Dad, who I think knew from when I was a young age that I was not going to be what he and Mom pictured.
Mom wanted a cheerleader and debutante just like her. She wanted her daughter to rush the same sorority she’d been a part of in college and dreamed of planning a huge wedding day with a fluffy white dress.
Dad wanted me to be in acquisitions, just like him and my older brother, Matthew, who was in college and destined to follow in his footsteps. To be fair, I did get my sass from my dad, and my take no shit attitude. But using those skills to be ruthless in a business merger was not exactly on my radar.
No, what they got instead of all that was an emo kid with a love for doodling and a dream of being a tattoo artist.
But that’s not even why Halo 5 was the beginning of my demise. Because as much as Mom hated it, Dad encouraged her that it was fine for me to play. Good for the brain muscles, he jokingly said over dinner as Mom angrily chewed an asparagus sprig.
And so, on my fifteenth birthday, I ripped open the present shaped like a video game first and squealed with delight, abandoning all my other gifts and running back to my room to play immediately.
It took me a while to figure the game out, but not too long to realize that I was years behind most of the people I was playing live with. Not that that deterred me. I was a teenager on summer break with all the time in the world. And if there was anything I loved more than drawing or gaming, it was a challenge.
I played as much as I could those first few weeks of summer vacation, leveling up and honing my skills. It wasn’t unusual for me to still be awake when Dad’s alarm went off for him to go into the city. He’d pop his head into my room, smile, and warn me to at least pretend I was sleeping when Mom got up.
I loved that summer. I loved the feeling of a winning streak, of staying up until the sun rose, of surprising my team when I spoke into my headset and they realized I was a girl. At school, I was a nobody, a loser, just another overweight teenager with acne and bad teeth and baggy clothes who lost more and more friends as she discovered her true interests.
But online? I was a bad ass.
I was almost a god — or goddess — when I was playing Halo. I controlled what I looked like, who I played with, and what a huge part I was of our team’s victory. People wanted me on their team. They wanted to play with me. They wanted to be me.
Everything was going great.
And then, a month and a half after my birthday, when summer was in full swing but school was looming on the other side of it, I was popped into a game with the absolute last person I ever expected.
Leo Hernandez.
Anyone who went to my high school knew who Leo was. Every girl knew his messy hair, his crooked smile, his lean, muscular body, his golden skin and infectious laugh. Every boy knew his speed and agility, the ease with which he excelled on the football field and off it, too. He was a star athlete with a dad who used to play in the NFL. He was popular. He was funny. He was rich.
He was the kind of boy who could smile at you and make you feel like the only girl in the world.
Little did I know he was also the boy who would ruin my life.
I knew it was him as soon as his username popped up: leohernandez13. Sure, there had to be other Leo Hernandez’s in the world, but that 13 gave him away. It was his jersey number since he played Pee Wee, and if there was any doubt left that it was him, it was obliterated when his familiar voice rang out in the chat.