Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
After saying all that, she sighs. I hate that sigh. She’s not wrong about any of it, and for the first time in my life, I want to do better. I want to be better. I don’t want to be hard and unreachable. I don’t want to be untouchable.
“I know I started this, but I thought it could mean something. I hoped it would. Even if it’s not a relationship because neither of us is relationship material, and we’re not ready for that level of commitment with everything going on in our lives. Anyway, don’t worry. You never made me think it could mean anything. It was just me being hopeful,” she continues.
“Ignacia—”
“No, Beau, it’s okay.” She won’t turn and face me, and I have zero right to ask her to. I don’t deserve her trust. I don’t deserve her looking me in the eyes. “It’s really okay. It’s been a night. We should both get some sleep.”
“Ignacia,” I call out again.
“Yes, Beau?” The blankets rustle, and my heart leaps and gallops. But she doesn’t turn. Dejected, it plummets back down to the pit of my stomach and refuses to beat normally.
Great. I’m going to go completely silent now? I had no idea what I was going to say or what would be appropriate for this situation because I’d never been in one like this. There’s never been a time when I so badly crossed every line. Client. Job. Contract. All just about obliterated. So what if we didn’t do the deed? What we did was enough to break down barriers and cross lines inside me and my mental space. I don’t know what to do with that, so what the hell should I say?
That, for a few seconds, I actually felt less lonely, and it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be? I’m still a liar, and there’s nothing I can say that would make it better.
Except the truth, but then she’d hate me.
Fucked if I do, fucked if I don’t.
But not in this bed.
Not physically.
Unless it’s the kind of physical pain that comes with the emotions we don’t want to feel and can’t help feeling anyway. Anger. Loneliness. Abandonment. Fear. Grief. Pain. Pain. Pain.
“If you’d like there to be a dick o’clock in the future, just let it mean something,” she whispers. The words are not just huffs under her breath. Rather, it’s a nice whisper.
“Did you just say dick o’clock?”
The blanket rustles again, and she sinks deeper into the pillows and pulls the quilt up a little bit higher. I’m just here, frozen, because I’m darned well flabbergasted. I have never been so thoroughly told.
“Goodnight, Beau.”
Chapter eleven
Ignacia
(Still sort of Sam)
We don’t talk about it. We probably should, but we don’t.
The next morning turns into the next morning, which turns into the next morning, and then three more days pass. I have one more night until Beau is going to be in my bed again, and even though there’s been a prim and proper brick wall erected around us outside of the bed, where we’ve coexisted in the space of let’s maybe pretend all of it didn’t happen and be as polite as possible, I’m not sure the wall is going to hold up in bed.
We’re electric in bed.
Our bodies aren’t on the same page as our brains.
I’ve never felt fire like that. Not even when I thought I was in love, and that’s supposed to be the safest, most wonderful, hottest sex because of all the trust and emotion involved. Maybe my body knew it wasn’t real. Or maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew there were red flags galore that I should have paid attention to.
It was never electric. It was never so hot that every fire department in the state would have to be called to put out the bed fire.
My body knows it’s still there, smoldering under the surface. It’s always known. I’ve tried everything to justify it in my mind, but maybe there’s no justifying it. It just…is.
So what if you both might have good chemistry? The man is as emotionally intelligent as a can opener, and his personality, or whatever he’s decided his personality should be, makes running through a park filled with mousetraps and sharp knives look comforting.
But that’s not how he really is.
Or is that something I keep telling myself to justify the fact that I keep falling for the same kind of toxic men?
No, not the same kind. Beau is so far from Aiden. The only thing they have in common is the chronological proximity of the first letter of their first names in the alphabet. Aiden lied to everyone. He lied about who he was. Beau is only lying to himself to protect himself after having to live through the worst pain imaginable.
Beau catches me in the barn on Friday morning after I’ve just fed the cats. They’ve already eaten, but they’re both hanging around, rolling in the loose hay all over the ground and in the sunbeams streaming in through the open door. It’s a lovely morning. I’m wearing a regular prairie dress that’s pink with white flowers. It was one of the first ones I ever sewed. I had to take it apart four times before I was happy with it, and it’s not taken in anywhere. It’s not fitted in the least, actually. I feel pretty ashamed for altering that other one. I truly don’t even know why I did it, other than maybe I wanted to be pretty and desirable for a minute again. Or that I wanted someone to look at me and see…I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to feel seen, to feel real, to feel like I haven’t turned into a ghost out here, and there’s something and someone under all the layers. I wanted to feel that under all the deception and the fake ID, I was still just Sam.