Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Olvander choked back laughter, his giant shoulders shaking. “Sure. Yeah, buddy. Have fun groveling. If she dusts you, I won’t bring a broom. I’ll show up with a whole vacuum cleaner, because you done blew it with this one.”
He went inside, and the door closed.
Brett swung his head back my way, and whoa. He’d been holding back with his buddy here. Now he was all intense, and the air felt sweltering around us. He moved toward me, slowly, and I only had two steps until I was against the wall.
He was in my space, leaning down.
I gulped.
“First off, what name do you prefer? I don’t want to keep messing up with you.”
He…what? I blinked. “You don’t?”
He growled, moving in another step, “What name?”
“Billie.” Oh, boy. He was super close. Like, I could feel his body heat kind of close. “My little brother called me Billie. Most everyone in my life knows not to use that other name.”
“You have a little brother?” His voice was still intense, but softer.
What is going on here? I nodded, faintly. “Had. He’s dead. He and my mom got in a car accident.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
I started to shrug, an old habit to deflect because I never liked talking about him, but then I was. “His name was Ben. He kept calling me Willy, and that got changed to Billy because he decided one Christmas that we should both have B names. I spell it with the ‘-ie’ because I felt it was more girly. I used to like being a girl back then.”
His eyebrows lowered. “You don’t now?” And he took one more step, the last step. His hand moved to the wall beside me. The other went to my stomach, touching me slightly.
His touch seared me.
It was overwhelming, welcomed, and alien all at the same time. It’d been so long since I felt anything remotely close to this, but even when I had, it didn’t compare to…whatever this was between us.
“I thought you hated me?” I asked.
His eyes were grave as he shook his head. “This is not an excuse, because I fucked up royally, but my football stats aside, I don’t know if you’re aware of my personal history. I didn’t grow up good. I have a twin brother—”
“You do?”
“—who’s in prison.”
“He is?”
“He went in for attempted rape, and never left because of all the bad shit he’s done in there.”
“Oh.” I frowned.
“That’s not all.”
“It’s not?” I whispered, feeling his hand sliding around to my back, aligning his front against my front.
“My dad’s been a drunk all my life, so I have nothing to do with him. My mom never left the trailer park. We had a house at one point, but for the most part, we were in the trailer park. We can get into that later, but there are good trailer parks and some that aren’t. She came from the stereotyped kind. If that doesn’t make sense to you, that’s a good thing, but if you meet her one day, you’ll understand. I gave up on her a while ago.”
“Oh.” I reached up to comfort him, but when my hand found his arm, a different zing went through me. “Oh.”
“I got two more siblings. One is the reason I thought you were trying to con me. The only contact I have with her is when I block her from hurting more people. She’s not good news, and I’m trying to turn over a new leaf, keeping communication with her to the bare minimum and as nice as I possibly can, while not letting her fuck with the way I view people. I almost missed out on you, because darling—”
Darling?
I liked that. No. I loved that.
His head inclined toward me. “You know how you sometimes have milestones that change your life?”
I nodded.
“If I’d missed out on a chance with you, that would’ve been a milestone in regret.”
Oh, whoa. A milestone in regret?
“I got a half-brother who grew up in the next town over with his mom, which probably saved him, and I’ve got no intention of fucking that up in some way, so I steer clear.” He stopped, holding my gaze for a beat. “So now you know something about me. I don’t talk about my family. Football saved me, plain and simple. Also, you were crying before. Why were you crying?”
I frowned, remembering that too. “Where did you come from?”
“We like eating here. We get escorted in from the back and slip into a booth. Most people have no clue we’re here. Olvander needed to talk about his woman, and honestly, I could use some drinks trying to figure out what to do about you.”
“About me?” Also, holy crap. He needed to be escorted in the back? He was that kind of athlete. Which I knew, but seeing it firsthand? Wow.
“Because I messed up. Bad. I’m sorry.”