Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
They get everything they want.
Anything they want.
Whenever they want.
They definitely don’t get dumped.
And they damn sure don’t get dumped in a crowded four-star restaurant for other people to witness.
Observe.
Judge.
All of which was a ploy to make it out of the initial situation alive.
I didn’t even go back to my apartment that night.
No.
I hid for three days at an acquaintance’s apartment – jotting down her streaming passwords and pilfering anxiety medication – hoping and praying and lighting candles that everything was finally over. That he got the message.
And he had.
He just didn’t like it hence the hundreds of roses crammed inside my apartment alongside beheaded stuffed bunnies that spelled out “You Are Still Mine”.
God, there was so much stuffing everywhere.
And thorns.
And my blood from the attempting to clean it up.
His obsessive need to have “the one that got away” – literally – has created my compulsive need to fucking run.
Even if it is out of an adorable corner grocery store, away from someone who makes me feel safe and secure and seen in ways I didn’t think were possible anymore.
Not sure I ever really thought they were possible to begin with.
“Want help?” Kipp enthusiastically asks from beside me, near the sink area.
“You mean you want me to want help,” I sassily tease, eyes pulling themselves away from the ingredients I’ve just finished lining up.
“You want me to want to help,” he smoothly flirts and leans in a bit closer.
“You mean you want me to want you to help.”
“How about I want this stupid fucking conversation to stop?” Nolan grunts from the couch in the nearby living room.
It’s impossible not to shoot my attention over my shoulder in his direction. “Want an ice-cold beer instead?”
His salt and pepper scruff covered face threatens to reveal a smirk. “You bringin’ it to me, Rabbit?”
“Should I bring you your supper too? Be barefoot and pregnant while I’m at it?”
The corners of his lips slowly creep upward until the grin I hate myself for wanting to sit on is plastered on his face. “I wouldn’t mind you being one of those things.”
Unlike my grocery store hero, this man is far from friendly.
Hell, not even sure he could tow friendly, and Kipp says the man can tow just about anything.
While getting under his skin is fun – and easy – the last thing I really want is to wreck shit that doesn’t need it.
And I don’t mean his Mr. Congeniality personality.
I mean whatever they’ve got going on between them.
Ever since I’ve stepped into their lives, all I’ve done is unintentionally pit them against one another.
Divide.
Cause friendship deductions and depreciations that are easy to fucking see.
Gahhhhh, even a ninety-five-year-old blind man who could never have been that type of samurai could fucking see it.
What I don’t entirely get is why?
Is Nolan threatened by me?
Does he think there’s a whole Eve making Adam eat an apple situation about to happen?
Should I reassure him by casually mentioning they’re not even a fruit I fucking care for?
And even if there was a biblical twist about to happen – which there isn’t – why does it fucking matter to him so much? Does he not think Kipp can take care of himself? Does he still see him as some helpless kid who isn’t man enough to handle what the world throws at him? How would Nolan know if he can or can’t if he never lets him at least fucking try?
Assuming that he doesn’t.
But it feels like he doesn’t.
On the contrary, is that why Kipp pushes so hard to defy every order that his best friend hand delivers? Is he finally realizing that he wants to be his own man and stop living in the shadows of a protector? Is it his way of proving that he can? That he’s capable of thinking and feeling for himself?
I guess the more important question is why do I care?
Or better yet…why can’t I stop caring?
Why can’t I stop thinking about how their relationship works? What words define it? What word can undo it?
Why can’t I stop thinking about being the words that rewrite it?
The pen used to recalculate it.
I know I should stop.
I know I need to stop.
I know none of it fucking matters because being here is temporary.
They are temporary.
And me fucking up whatever don’t ask, don’t know shit they have will be over very momentarily.
Like as soon as those parts are in my car.
Maybe I’ll switch gears and hide out in Mexico instead of Arizona.
Reinvent myself starting with my name.
Take up residence at a resort in exchange for doing their accounting free of charge.
Get far away from him and them.
Just because I’m cursed doesn’t mean they have to spend the rest of what will probably be good lives being that way too.
They’re not that invested in me despite the fact I am becoming that way in them.