Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
“What’s going on in that mind of yours?” Shay asks. “You look . . . disturbed.”
I take a deep breath, in and out, visualizing the stress and pushing it away. “I never told you . . . I had to see a shrink my first year in the NFL,” I say, evading her question. “I didn’t have you around to help anymore, so I had to learn how to deal with it on my own.”
She winces. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it was good. I mean, I’m glad I finally learned some coping strategies.”
“I thought football was one thing you never felt anxious about.”
“Not the games, but everything else.” I look at the ceiling, remembering how overwhelmed I was by all the decisions that first year in the league. My agent helped, but it was still too much. “It was a lot, but I figured it out.”
“I’m glad. I guess you don’t need your own personal comfort creature after all.”
“Is that all you thought you were? My comfort creature?”
“I didn’t mind.” She dodges eye contact, studying her food instead, but she’s smiling. “It let me be something more than the tagalong little sister.”
“Shay?” I wait until she meets my gaze. It takes a while, but I’m patient and she’s curious. “There’s no one else I would’ve dropped everything for at the last minute. No one else I would have flown to Paris to see. You haven’t been a tagalong to me in a really long time.”
She bites her lip, and when she releases it, I have to tamp down the urge to reach across the table and touch the marks her teeth left behind. When she smiles at me, everything feels right with the world. “You’ve always known the right thing to say.”
Shay
Paris doesn’t sleep at night. Or if she does, it’s not until long after I’ve fallen asleep. It’s eleven, and customers loiter at tables in front of brasseries, drinking wine, smoking, and talking. Cars roll by, and the moon creeps higher in the sky, bringing me closer to the moment when I’ll have to say good night. I dread that moment with everything inside me. I’d keep walking forever with aching feet and my exhaustion-fuzzy brain if it meant I didn’t have to let go of Easton’s hand.
Dinner was amazing. Not the meal—I have no recollections of what the food tasted like—but the experience. I’ve been with him for four hours and I’m right back to the lovesick girl I was the last time I saw him. Maybe worse. My chest already aches when I think of saying goodbye tomorrow night. I still can’t believe Easton came to Paris when he can only stay one night. He has to get back for a PR obligation—some black-tie event where he’s promised to appear—so he’ll leave only twenty-four hours after he landed. Insane.
“When do you have to be back to your room?” he asks, stopping to look at his phone.
“I’m a big girl now.” I bite back a grimace at my word choice. Big girl, indeed. “No curfew.”
“When do you want to go back to your room?”
I shake my head. I’m in no rush to return to Heather and the sounds of her sneaking Steve into our room after lights out, them making out in her bed. And yet that’s all secondary to how much I don’t want my time with Easton to end. “I wouldn’t go back at all tonight if it was up to me.”
He smiles, and it’s a smile I haven’t seen on Easton many times. It’s big and wide and makes his eyes shine. “Do you . . . Would you want to stay with me? I have a room.”
“So we wouldn’t be sleeping in the streets?”
He pinches my side. “You’re such a pest.”
I squirm, trying to avoid his tickling hands, but he’s stronger and bigger and spins me around. Then I’m in his arms, his body pressed to mine, his gaze on my mouth.
I lift a hand and tentatively touch his cheek. “Where’s your room?”
“No idea.” I feel his laugh more than hear it, and he nods up the block. “But my driver is right up there.”
His driver. “You’re so fancy these days.”
He grins. “Nah. Just trying to impress a girl. You’re sure about this?”
“Are you sure?” I ask, my voice a little shaky.
He huffs out a laugh. “It’s not even a question. Tonight, I want as much of you as you’ll give me.”
“So it’s a plan.”
He leads me to the car, and the driver jumps out and opens the door for us. I slide in first, and Easton follows.
Outside my window, the lights of Paris glow, making this fantasy seem even more like a dream. Last night’s bus tour doesn’t hold a candle to riding in a private car around Paris with Easton—and Steve and Heather have nothing to do with that. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I ask.