Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 67432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
I was gone a week after our fight.
“Eric,” I said, holding out a hand, Eric returning it with a genuine smile on his face. He still had that same teddy-bear kind of grin, the one that disarmed anyone in a five-foot vicinity. It was a superpower, and one I’d seen him use during my brief time in the academy. He had a knack for getting past people’s defenses and effortlessly extracting information he knew was vital. From where we stood, my sister was blocked from view, so she couldn’t see how completely dumbstruck I was by this random meeting.
And that’s when an idea hit me—as out of the blue as this meeting was. It struck like lightning and glued me to the floor, making me miss whatever Eric had just said as my brain tried to put together the pieces of thought shrapnel, forming a crazier and wilder idea with each passing millisecond.
And one that could possibly work.
3
ERIC RUIZ
No fucking way.
I could hardly believe it. Colton Cooper. The boy with the golden-brown hair and the electric and unforgettable smile. I’d died a thousand deaths at the tips of his fingers, brought back to life each and every time by the voltage behind those lips. We’d spent countless nights exploring each other, veiled in a thin curtain of shadows and secrets. We weren’t supposed to be together, not in the way we wanted to. We were best friends in the academy, and everyone saw the camaraderie between us as clear as the winter sun.
And I’m sure many of them saw the underpinnings of that friendship. Colton being out and proud at the time only made things harder for me. It muddied waters that were already full of shark-attracting chum. I’d expected my inner desires to be laid bare at any moment, ripped apart by the circling predators: my parents, my grandfather, my high school friends, my televangelist aunt.
None of them would have supported me, and as a momma’s boy who strived to make everyone around him proud, that made things difficult.
Too hard, too risky. I cut things off with Colton on a night I’d never forget. Thunder boomed louder than my heart, which rattled so hard against my ribs I was sure I bruised a couple. Colton’s blue eyes caught the lightning strikes, throwing them back at me, brighter through the tears that formed.
He dropped out of the academy a week later and stopped answering my calls.
“I—hey,” I said, finding that Colton hadn’t lost an ounce of that electric magnetism he’d had at nineteen. If anything, it had only grown stronger, refined by a powerful jaw and a perfectly lined-up and trimmed beard.
Damn. He somehow managed to get hotter.
I tried not to think about the way I must have changed since he’d last seen me.
“You’re looking great,” he said, as if plucking my insecurities directly from my head and crushing them under his boot.
“You too,” I volleyed back. “Are you visiting?” The only thing I knew about Colton was that he’d moved back home—Los Angeles, where his mother had owned a multimillion-dollar media empire. We didn’t follow each other on social media, so his life had been effectively hidden from my own for years now.
He looked happy, so I guessed that was a good thing. He still had the same ear-to-ear grin and perfectly messed-up head of blond hair that would always earn him a comment from the administrator, who’d had a not-so-secret crush on him.
He chuckled, shook his head. He ran a hand through his hair— a ringless hand. Not that I was looking or anything.
“Moved here a couple months ago, actually. There’s been some big life changes that had me picking up my shit and hunting for something new but familiar. My sister’s been here for years, so it only made sense I came back. I felt like my time here was cut way too short.”
“Well, welcome back to Atlanta.” I matched his smile, even though a slight awkwardness clung to us like smoke from a recently extinguished fire. Funny how life worked like that. You could find the most comfortable, most intimate moments of your life with someone— we shared nights of not just sex but of baring the deepest parts of ourselves to each other, our most daunting fears and our biggest, most lofty-headed dreams, all while holding each other, naked, fingers trailing across every curve and every ridge, playing with patches of soft hair and squeezing on the firmer parts.
And then, with that same exact person, you could find yourself standing—fully clothed—in a random coffee shop, wondering if saying a quick goodbye would just make everything easier.
“Life changes, huh?” I asked, deciding not to take the easy route. Not just yet.
“Yeah.” Colton nodded, the smile wiping away with a sigh. “It’s our mom. She passed this year and left the family in complete shambles.”