Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
“What?” he asks.
I try to speak again, but I’m at a loss for words.
“I’m really going to need you to accept the fact that I’m not going to date you,” I say. “I’m sorry, but you’re not my type. I don’t know how else to make that clear to you. In fact, you’re my anti-type.”
“Is that even a thing?” He rises from the ground, his height forming a tower that cocoons the two of us.
“My point is,” I say, arms crossed, “you have to stop asking me out. My answer’s never going to change.”
“One date,” the relentless son of a bitch has the nerve to say. “One date and you’ll never have to see me again.”
“Look, I appreciate that you like a good challenge and you like to win and all that, but this victory isn’t going to happen for you, so maybe refocus your sights on someone else?”
His expression twists. “Someone else?”
“I could close my eyes and point to any girl walking past us right now and I’m one-hundred percent sure you could ask her out and she’d say yes,” I tell him. “Win-win for both of you.”
“Someone else?” he repeats harder, as though my suggestion disgusts him. “Irie, there is no one else. There’s only you. There’s only ever been you.”
His words are a balm to the hammering chaos happening inside me right now—my heart has gone off its rails, my stomach is two seconds from upheaving itself, and my mind is thinking all sorts of thoughts that contradict and make zero sense … and then he goes and says something like that.
There’s only you. There’s only ever been you.
I dated someone just like him once upon a time.
Dashingly handsome. Charismatic. Mr. Popular. Made me feel like it was just the two of us no matter where we were or how many people were around. Said all the right things. Did all the right things. Made the kind of promises a person could believe with every fiber of their soul.
I loved him harder than I’d ever loved anyone or anything in my life, with an intensity so dialed up it was as magical as it was terrifying.
But I was younger then. Too young to understand how something so beautiful could turn so ugly in the blink of an eye.
That boy might be long gone.
But the scars are permanent, everlasting.
And when I see Talon, I can’t help but see the guy who came before him as they’re cut from the very same cloth.
When I make a mistake, I never repeat it. Ever.
“Do me a favor and don’t say stuff like that again, okay?” Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I head for the sidewalk that leads to the bus stop. “Bye, Talon.”
“Irie,” he calls after me.
But I don’t stop.
Chapter 6
Talon
I stare across the classroom Friday morning, restless and unsettled as my knee bounces. Irie showed up a minute late to recitation and took a seat at a table in the front—never mind the fact that there were three empty chairs at mine.
My eyes scan over the words on the test before me, but nothing makes sense.
I stayed up until almost one in the morning last night studying on my own and reading those two chapters in the textbook, but concentration came at a premium. I couldn’t stop thinking about Irie. I couldn’t stop replaying our time together at the library.
Everything was going well. I was making her laugh. Getting her to flirt back with me for the first time ever …
I even gave her my favorite hoodie when we went outside because it was either that or call it a night, and I was just getting her warmed up.
But of course, the second I asked her out, it was game over.
I don’t even think it’s fair to say I advanced the ball.
My sexy enigma turned into this woman with cloudy eyes and crossed arms and an edge in her voice that wasn’t there before.
Over the years, any time I’d ask her out, she’d give me a polite yet casual “no thanks” or come up with another way to gently let me down. But last night brought out a side of her I’ve never seen before.
I called out for her as she stalked off, but she ignored me.
And so I let her go.
Figured I was the last person she wanted chasing after her, especially since it was me she was running away from.
“If you’re finished with your quizzes, bring them up here.” A dark-haired TA in acid-wash jeans and a white Guns-n-Roses t-shirt is perched on the edge of a metal desk in front of a white board. Tattoos cover her fingers and the underside of her left forearm, and a silver hoop protrudes from her septum. She looks like she doesn’t give a fuck about a damn thing (besides anthropology, I guess).