Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
I have no idea how she knew that. Small-town gossip travels far and wide, I guess, and I suppose I do all my shopping in Upperhand since it’s only twenty minutes away while Seattle is an hour away. And well…Seattle.
“Oh no. You’ve got me all wrong, princess. I’ll tell you a few things about me in a nutshell. One, most people would say I’m an ass and that I do insensitive things like moving away from everyone and maintaining very little communication, such that the people who love me worry even though they don’t have to. Two, they’d say I don’t march, not to my beat or the beat of anyone else’s drums. The things that are expected of me? Those are the last things I’m willing to do. And three?” I realize I’m counting on my fingers like a kindergarten teacher, so I slam my hand down quickly. “Three. Uh, three. I’m good. Just good with the life I have here right now. Lastly, four, and the most important point—well, more like an addendum to three—I’m not going to get married. Not to anyone. And not to you. Ever.”
I expect this news to be greeted with a first-class dumpster fire of a temper tantrum. Nina might not look like a princess at the moment—err, okay, so she does, and a bedraggled one at that—but she was raised in the city, spoiled, and given everything she ever asked for. Never mind that I, too, was raised in the city and kind of spoiled. It was different. I know because my parents talked about her and her family. A lot. Also? I was capable of using social media. I used to look her up sometimes. Call it researching the enemy or keeping myself in the loop. I needed to know what she was doing so I knew how to ward her off and fight what our families were trying to do to us. You can’t go into a battle unprepared without a strategy.
Her face does harden, but I can’t tell if it’s because what I said was distasteful or she realized that there’s grit everywhere, including between her teeth, and she doesn’t like the taste of it. I figure I have to drive home my point, so I do.
“People think love and marriage are the best parts of life, but they’re wrong. Love exists in some nebulous form, but it won’t ever exist between you and me. Certainly, it would never exist in a forced marriage. If our grandmothers think it would unite our families, they’re sorely mistaken. It would only drive us apart and make everyone around us miserable. As for myself, I think love is some token people use against the fear of being alone. Loneliness. They’d rather delude themselves into thinking they feel something, but really, all they feel is a bone-deep desire not to be by themselves. That’s what drives the world. It’s not romance. It’s fear. It’s the fear of failing, not making it, and not being good enough, and that, in turn, brings shame. We can’t live with those feelings, so we go out and tell ourselves that we’ve found parts of ourselves in someone else, and it’s love because it’s the soul’s reflection of one another, but that’s not what’s really going on at all. Love is just what we tell ourselves, a lie we force ourselves to believe because it makes us feel better about the inevitable truth, which is that we’re all just going to be dust and ash, and from the time we get here until the time we leave, there’s not much else.”
Nina’s eyes narrow. They look wary, and a new shadow moves into them, blocking out the sparkly gold sunshine that was there a minute ago despite the dust and grime. Her jaw gets steely, and then her brow cocks up like she’s just heard something funny. She looks at me like she can’t decide whether I’m serious or just being an ass because that’s what I warned her straight off I would do.
I stand still, holding my breath.
Behind me, the world, the farm, the chickens, the sheep, the cats, the dog, and everything go on just as they always have, oblivious to how Nina Geraldson just walked into my life like cowpat dropping from the sky straight onto my head—a cowpat of arranged marriage doom.
I need to get her out of here. I would do the getting out of here if there was somewhere to go, but this is my home. All I can do is swallow hard, roll my shoulders back, and stand my ground.
She crosses her arms and gives me one heck of a good staredown, then shrugs and grins. Yes, she freaking grins, and it’s not a crazy-ass grin for show. She really means it. Also, yup, there’s definitely grit between her teeth. “Well then, Thaddius Wonderduck, it’s a darned good thing I came here to find a way out of this marriage, not try to talk you into going through with it.”