Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 77793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Suddenly, my mental to-do list that I was in such a hurry to complete didn’t seem so enticing in my mind, but I knew it had to be done. Tingles aren’t reality. I know hope is often a foolish tease, and reality is more like a wet slap upside the head with a pickle flung through the air. Don’t ask me to name a scenario in which this could happen. I suppose a food fight, or perhaps if it rained pickles. Pickle rain would probably be a little painful but totally delicious to make up for it.
I know I need to get Orion to sign those papers. And sign them right this time.
Anything more is pretty much as much a long shot as pickle rain.
CHAPTER 13
Orion
I walk Mrs. Johnson to her door and hand her the tub of ice cream. She gives me one of those toodeloo finger waves and a secret smile that makes me feel good in a way I haven’t in a long time. Taking her out for sushi totally made her night. Maybe it even made her whole year. After she shuts the door, I’m left with a nice, warm, glowy feeling.
At least until I turn around and find Echo scowling behind me in the hall. I think it’s a forced scowl. I want to hope it’s a forced scowl. Even still, my pulse picks up, and my heart kicks. It lets out a lonely sigh that both surprises me and doesn’t surprise me at all.
How does one convince one’s wife not to divorce him?
I’m sure if I had the answer to that, I’d be rich and famous. Neither of which I want to be. But what I do want is another night like tonight with Echo. I also want another night like the night at the treehouse, even if I have to sit on the cold, hard ground, keeping watch while she sleeps above, and then another fifteen minutes like what we had together in the treehouse.
My cock jerks to attention instantly, and great, now I have to talk my own hard-on down. I have a tough enough job ahead of me without my dick getting involved.
Echo frowns. “So, I have the papers in my email. The ones the lawyer sent to me before. I could print them out, and you could come in and sign them properly. Properly as in spell your fake name the right way this time.”
“What if I can’t remember how?”
She sighs. It’s the kind of sigh that says for the love of unicorns and glitter farts, what kind of imbecile did I marry? “I’m sure if we called your granny, she’d have the correct spelling.”
“Gah, I was kidding. I remember. Let’s leave Granny out of this.”
She looks way too satisfied as she turns around and unlocks her door. I, on the other hand, feel like an intruder stepping into her private domain. The apartment is all clean, sparkly, and neutral looking with white paint on the walls, hardly any art, token espresso-colored furniture in the small living room, a tiny glass table with four chairs around it, a dated kitchen, and then the usual patio door with white slat blinds that run the length of it for privacy.
“I kind of expected some major domain-style fortress in here. I thought maybe that’s where the magic happens.”
Echo shrugs. She walks over to her computer, which is sitting on a perfectly normal, small desk in the corner of the living room. “Nope. Just my laptop. It cost four grand, so I guess it’s about as good as having a room full of crazy technology.”
“You did all of it from a laptop? Found us and all, I mean?”
“No. I had help, remember?”
“Still, I’m impressed. I mean, I was impressed before, but now I’m ultra impressed.”
I stand at the other end of the room, feeling forlorn and lost because, in a minute, those divorce papers are going to be printed out and presented to me, and that’s going to be it. The end. Possibly the last time I’ll ever see Echo. I’m torn between needing to massage the ache in my chest, blinking away the speck of dust from my eye, and grinning like a fool because I really am impressed and proud. The fact that Echo can do everything she does from this apartment and just a laptop, both of which look totally normal, makes me grin because she’s really talented.
She’s so talented that she should be working with us, living with us, and learning what a real family is and how we take care of each other.
Damn it, I can’t not fight for her.
I step behind her desk where she’s currently sitting, bringing up the email after going through approximately eight hundred password and security screens. I get close without her paying attention to me. Close enough to smell whatever perfume she has on, which is probably no perfume at all. The smell isn’t strong. It smells light and barely there, but it’s highly noticeable at the same time. My dick twitches, my balls tighten, my nostrils flare, and my lungs fill up with the delicious scent. I have no idea if it’s flowers or marshmallows or real-life bottled unicorn farts—don’t ask me how the real-life part of that would be possible—but she smells incredible.