Total pages in book: 176
Estimated words: 167257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 558(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 558(@300wpm)
No.
Rowdy and I keeping our distance until we sorted our shit out was the best thing either of us could do.
Living with him, sharing a space, breathing his air…that would be tempting fate, and I wasn’t sure I could live with the consequences.
“I know how it sounds,” he told me, “but I promise it won’t be like that. I know how to keep my hands to myself.” If the circumstances weren’t so fucked, I would have snorted at that because he absolutely did not. “I just want to take care of you. Be there for you. Keep you safe. No matter what ties bind us, that fact will never change.”
I swallowed. “What are we going to do, Owen?”
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this.” His warm hand rubbed up and down my spine soothingly, and it was all I could do not to close my eyes and forget. “Whatever it takes.”
Whatever it takes…
What would it take exactly?
Nothing but our souls, sanity, morals, and self-respect. And I was willing to risk anything, even my soul, not to walk this earth without this man again.
A shuddered breath left me.
This was so stupid. There was nothing concrete to suggest Rowdy and I couldn’t be together.
Jada couldn’t be sure that I was the daughter she’d given away any more than I could be sure the baby in the photo she’d carried around for twenty years was me—or that Rowdy was the man who’d sired me.
Conjecture.
For now, that was all it was.
I sniffed and forced myself to pull away from him—to look into his green eyes and pretend I didn’t see his determination to keep me close, even if it meant damning himself. “So we just what…live in the gray until then?”
The gray.
The sliver of space between right and wrong, knowing and not knowing, salvation and damnation—between hope for a future and the calamity of us.
Because that was the gritty truth of what Rowdy was proposing.
We walk hand in hand into obscurity and hope the two sides looming over our heads don’t crush us into nothing.
We hope that we wouldn’t be utterly destroyed by it.
“Yes.” Rowdy took my hand in his. I linked our fingers. “Together?”
I sniffed again and nodded. A lone tear for my soul trailed down my face. “Together.”
Grief, after all, makes you do things.
And even though we’d agreed to hope, to be together until the truth either forced us apart or brought us closer, my heart still mourned what could have been.
I always knew I was going to hell. I never thought loving the wrong woman would be the reason.
It had barely been a day since I told Atlas what Jada suspected, and so far, I’d upheld my promise. I’d kept my hands to myself. Atlas was back under my roof, which would have to be enough for now.
Last night, I’d tucked her into bed, kissed her cheek, and ignored the pain in her eyes when she realized I wasn’t going to join her. I’d gone to the guest room, where I showered, avoided my reflection in the mirror, and slept alone.
It was the first time I wished Atlas hadn’t made me a better man. I was still a work in progress, but nine months ago, I would have taken all I could, cut my losses on what I couldn’t, and forgotten her name.
Instead, I lay awake, thinking of a plan on how to keep her. I didn’t get much sleep.
From the look of her, neither did Atlas.
I was leaning against the counter, eating a bowl of cereal, when she stumbled into the kitchen the next morning. I paused mid-chew when I noticed she’d ditched the sleep shorts she’d changed into last night and now only wore one of my wifebeaters that barely covered her ass.
Was she even wearing panties? The way her ass jiggled freely under the stretched tank, it didn’t look like it.
“Morning,” she sleepily greeted, her eyes barely open.
I didn’t return her greeting. I was too busy staring at her nipples poking through my shirt. The cotton was so thin I could see the brown areola underneath.
Atlas didn’t seem to notice as she turned, opened one of the cabinets, and lifted onto the tips of her toes to reach the ceramic mugs on the middle shelf.
She liked to drink tea in the morning and sometimes before bed, so those mugs were one of the first purchases she’d made when I gave her my credit card and let her loose in here.
The bottom of my shirt rode up as she stretched, revealing the soft curve of her ass and the red string nestled where my face should have been. I didn’t even realize she’d turned and caught me staring until I heard her soft voice call my name.
“Owen.”
Hearing the reprimand in her tone, I tore my gaze away from her pussy hidden from me by my own damn shirt, got an eye full of her hardened nipples once more, her parted lips, and then finally, her eyes. My lips tilted when I saw the restraint in them slowly unraveling. “Yes, Atlas?”