Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
My shoulders slump. I know when I’ve been defeated, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. “I’m still going to be worried.”
“I’ll be fine. I can handle Pierce.”
“But what if you can’t?” I press. “You’re tough but he’s got half a foot and at least seventy pounds on you.”
“I can take him.”
“No, you can’t,” I insist. “He’s almost as big as I am, and I could pick you up and throw you across the room with one hand.”
She rolls her eyes and mutters something I can’t make out beneath her breath.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says. “I should go. I’ve already missed too much of the karaoke. Someone’s going to get offended if I don’t go join in the ‘fun.’ See you inside.”
“Tell me what you said. Please,” I say, curling my fingers around her elbow when she tries to leave.
Instantly, electricity shivers up my arm. My stomach tightens, warmth floods through my core, and all I want to do is pull her closer. I want to tuck her under my chin, wrap my arms tight around her, and growl at anyone who dares to get close to what’s mine.
But she’s not mine, and she never will be.
I have to let her go. I have to leave her alone so she can find someone capable of giving her the love, support, and protection I can’t. But not Pierce. I can’t leave her alone with him, not even as a client.
I’m about to volunteer to be her bodyguard during her appointments with the jerk, when Binx bursts out, “I said, ‘but you wouldn’t.’ You wouldn’t pick me up with one hand because you don’t ever put your hands on me. Even at the wedding, as soon as you gave me a boost into the tree, you couldn’t let go fast enough. I almost fell because I didn’t have a good grip on the branch yet.”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I—”
“I don’t want you to be sorry, I want you to tell me why you really said what you said back there.” She steps closer, until her sweet, sexy smell fills my head. “Why did you tell Pierce to get his hands off me? Why were you glaring at him like you wanted to smash his face in with a rusty tire iron?”
I swallow and curl my hands into fists.
I won’t touch her.
I can’t.
Even if I could, this isn’t the time and certainly not the place. Her entire family is inside, not to mention my mother. If we were going to give dating a try, it would have to be something we kept quiet. I wouldn’t want my mother or Sprout to get excited about something that might not work, and it’s obvious her parents think I’m trash. Getting involved with an ex-con, no matter how long ago I served my time, would only make her relationship with them more strained.
I don’t want that for her.
Especially not for something that wouldn’t last.
But it would last. That’s the problem. She doesn’t mind that you’re intense as fuck and color outside the lines. You’re perfect for each other. At least for now. You’d draw her in, tie her down, and use her up. By the time she realizes she threw her youth away on an old man, it’ll be too late. You’ll be a grandpa and she’ll be stuck trying to find another partner in middle age, a thing you know sucks all the fucking ass.
Or you’ll be dead, and she’ll be alone.
The men in my family don’t live long, healthy lives. The ones who don’t self-destruct get taken out by heart disease or lung cancer or some weird twist of fate.
I’ll be lucky if I get another twenty years.
In twenty years, Binx will be forty-six, around the same age I am now, and I sure as hell can’t imagine myself with a sixty-year-old woman. Hell, my mother’s only sixty-eight. But under all the blue dye, her hair is nearly white, and she can’t get up off the floor after playing games with Sprout without holding onto the couch.
The aging process between twenty-six and forty-six might not be that big of a deal, but a lot more degeneration happens between forty-six and sixty-six.
I can already feel myself starting to slow down. I can’t work a twelve-hour day without a good night’s sleep anymore, and I get injured so much more easily than I did as a younger man. I haven’t had something major go wrong, but I deal with enough weird, new aches and pains to be irritated with my body on a regular basis. It’s only gotten worse since I hit my late thirties. It’s enough to make me pretty sure that fifty-two is going to feel a hell of a lot different—and more physically unpleasant—than forty-two.
That’s my future. I have maybe ten more good years left, and Binx deserves so much more.