Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 88656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
I lay there feeling him pressed against me in the dark, listening to the sound of his breathing. I didn’t dare move, because I was afraid he might let go of me.
9
THE morning light did not sneak into Kage’s bedroom. It laid siege to it, sending us cowering for cover beneath the down blankets and sheets. All three of us came fully awake there, one by one, stifled by the echoes of our own breath.
Kage was the first to brave the day. He threw the cover down the bed, revealing not only himself, but Vanessa and me as well. Vanessa giggled in her husky morning voice, and I yelled in protest.
“No lazy people in my bed,” Kage announced as he ran for the bathroom, dragging the covers along with him so that we couldn’t burrow back down. He dropped them outside the bathroom door and disappeared inside.
“Is there another bathroom?” I asked Vanessa, turning away so that she wouldn’t see my morning wood.
“There are two more bathrooms out there. One off the living room, and one in the other bedroom.”
“There’s another bedroom? Why did we all pile up in here?”
“It was a slumber party.” She laughed. “And because Kage would have lost his mind if you and I were wandering around unsupervised out there while he was in here. He’s very jealous, you know. Maybe you’re figuring that out by now.”
“But I thought you two were just friends.” I tried to sound nonchalant when I felt anything but.
“We are. Well, we are now, anyway. Things used to be different back in school. Mikey was my first love. I thought we would get married one day, you know? Have babies. Do the whole family thing.”
My face colored at the thought, and at the personal sentiment behind the words. I wanted to get to know Kage, but this was definitely not what I had in mind. It embarrassed me, and even worse, it made me feel somehow desperate. Telling me she’d been Kage’s first love… well, hell. Vanessa may as well have sunk a knife into my belly. It was ripping me up inside, and I didn’t even know why.
I just knew I didn’t want it to be true.
I wanted Kage to have never loved before. Wanted to keep him on that pedestal I’d put him on the first time we’d met. He was larger than life— beyond all of that. He wasn’t supposed to love someone.
Not like that.
Kage chose that moment when I was seething in silence to come out of the bathroom, his eyes slightly puffy from sleep. The bruise beneath his left eye was clearly visible in the light of day. He rubbed his belly lackadaisically, splaying his fingers over the taut ripples of his abs.
My eyes slid shut, and my tongue snaked out to wet my lips, and heat washed over me. For an instant I was back in that bed with Kage pressed against my back, gripping me with his powerful arm.
“Isn’t that right, Mikey?” Vanessa asked him, as if he’d been in on the conversation all along. Her voice jolted me out of my little fantasy.
“Isn’t what right?”
“That we were each other’s first love. I was just telling Jamie.”
Kage pulled a pair of running shorts out of his walnut dresser and watched himself in the mirror as he put them on. “That’s right,” he said, and his confirmation twisted the knife in my gut.
“We were going to get married and have babies,” she said again.
“Yep.” Kage walked over to her and folded her into his arms. “Then things changed. And now I love you even more.”
I cleared my throat. “Well, I’d love to try to figure you two out and all, but I’ve got to go to the restroom before we have an accident in here.”
With that, I left the room, not waiting for either of them to respond. All of that stuff was none of my business, really. Well, actually it was my business in a way. If there was any chance it could affect Kage’s public image, then it was by definition my business. But right now I just wanted to get as far away from that piece of information as I could.
Hell, I’d never even been in love myself. And then to find out that the unstoppable Michael Kage— The fucking Machine, for Christ’s sake!— had loved a girl. I suppose it humanized him in a way I wasn’t prepared to accept. And whether I wanted to admit it or not, it pissed me off badly.
When I returned to the room, Vanessa and Kage were lying on the bed again with their phones in their hands. “Selfie time,” Vanessa told me. “Grab your phone and jump in here. I haven’t seen my BFF in ages, and I want to have something to remember in case it’s another year and a half before he decides to call.”