Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72655 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72655 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Now comes the sigh. It does come, but it’s not an angry sigh or a patronizing one. Just a huge exhale tinged with sadness. That gleam in his eyes? I don’t think it’s because he’s mad at me. It honestly might have more to do with the fact that he would like to throttle my ex. His free hand pinches the back of his neck. Yeah, that’s totally a stress mechanism.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you.” He looks like he’s just been wounded or dropped from an impossible height to crash and crumble on the ground. I can talk about what happened to me without the same level of feeling I once had, but he’s hearing it for the first time, and he looks crushed. “I now understand why this conversation was triggering for you.”
Triggering? Yes, I suppose it was. I immediately thought the worst even though, after I was left behind, I spent so much time trying not to be that person who gets triggered. I don’t want to think people are there one minute and gone the next. That commitment and feelings don’t exist for everyone because they didn’t exist for one man. I never want to lump other people into the same boat that a single experience was born from.
“Evilla?”
“I panicked. I’ve tried to never do that. To never make assumptions or think I know another person’s mind. I know you wouldn’t do that. I know you wouldn’t just leave. I know you don’t want to break up, and still, I was so irrational.”
“This conversation must have been hell for you from the minute I told you my dad just bought a castle and wants me to help him fix it up.”
“I thought that was code for my armpits smell funny. Oh my god. Does my…my, you know, smell funny?”
“No!” I don’t know which one of us is more horrified. “Do my armpits smell funny?” He has the grace to say that with half a laugh, which pulls half a snort from me. At least we can laugh together. That’s a start.
“No. God no. Does it make me weird to say that even if they did, I’d probably like it?”
“Body chemistry is a good thing. And ours is great.”
“But…” There has to be a but coming. I just can’t believe this isn’t a break-up conversation. Mont is loaded, and he has every opportunity in the world available to him. Me? I’m just a girl who comes from a regular family, who is normal in every single way, and whose life revolves around pudding and crab legs. “If I’m just the wreckage of something that maybe could have been good, and you decided you don’t want it, and you’re leaving me behind in order to grow, that’s just how life goes. It’s better to be straight up about it and tell it like it is than to hurt each other and hope we’ll get over it. Unresolved stuff stinks, and no one needs more noxious vapor in their life.”
Mont’s hand lifts off mine and cups my cheek. “Evilla. Please. I’m not trying to tell you that I want to break up. I don’t want time, and I don’t want space. This is just me telling you that my dad bought a castle in Scotland because it’s been my mom’s forever dream to have one. It’s going to take years to fix it up, and it’s something he asked me to do with him as a family. He’s not trying to take me away from here, he’s not trying to divert my interests overseas, and he’s not trying to run my life. He asked. I could always say no.”
“No! Don’t do that! It’s important to you. It’s important to them.”
He’s never looked more intense before. Gah, my body notices how hot intensity looks on him. It’s not the scary intensity from that night in the restaurant when he found out I was an imposter. This is a different kind of focus—a straight-up looking into my soul focus that is reserved just for me.
“I really like you, Evilla. Really, really like you.”
I know what he’s trying to say. Oh my god, he’s dropping the L-bomb without dropping it, all while looking straight into my eyes. Fuck, if this guy isn’t considered a total dreamboat straight out of a romance novel or movie, then I’m not sure who would be.
“I really like you too.” Now I’m dropping the L-bomb.
We’re dropping it together, here in the middle of this park. Could that possibly mean he doesn’t want to go to Europe and never come back? Could it mean he likes my brand of normal? That he wants to keep exploring crab joints together and going for slightly possessed walks on the beach and having really good, steamy, sometimes slightly raunchy, but always amazing sex together? Does it mean he still wants to meet my parents one day, and he wants me to officially meet his parents someday, too?