Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
I feel every word like I feel every touch. I feel every look like I feel his mouth.
I don’t want to be the little girl he grew up with. I want him to touch me and take me somewhere quiet and kiss me and …
I shake with my tears.
Did I misread everything? Again?
The way he gripped my hair in my bathroom. His breath in my ear. His eyes and how it feels like he’s fighting himself to not look at me all the time.
The way he asked if he could do what he did to me on the sink counter the other night.
I imagined everything I thought he was feeling. I wanted to hear the desire or desperation or some shit in his voice, so I did. I imagined he was mine.
I inhale, realizing he was on these sheets with someone else last night, and start to pull back.
They smell good, though. Freshly washed. Was he trying to hide what he did?
A door downstairs whips shut again and again, and in a minute, I hear laughter and music pump through the house. Footfalls grow closer, ascending the stairs, and then another door, perhaps across the hall, closes.
Farrow and his friends are back. Taking my phone out of my pocket, I start to dial Kade to make sure he’s okay. I don’t care who won the fight after Hunter grabbed me out of his truck, but I want to make sure he’s safe.
But I just check Snapchat instead, seeing a picture of his hand posted ten minutes ago with the dashboard of his truck in the background. His knuckles are skinned.
I shake my head. He’s fine. Letting the whole world know he got into a fight, which is just so cool.
I need to get out of here, and I don’t want Hunter to see. I’m going to bed, and tomorrow, I’m training.
Before I can stand, though, my phone rings. I see Quinn’s name on the screen.
I answer, pausing a moment before I hold it to my ear. “Hey,” I say, trying to make my voice sound normal. “What are you up to?”
“You looked so good in that jacket,” she sing-songs.
How did…
I sigh, wiping away my tears. Someone must’ve posted a pic of me. I look down, trying to pull the jacket over my stomach.
“It’s tight.”
“It’s perfect, I’d say.”
I can’t help but laugh a little, her voice easing the pain.
I rise from the bed, almost grabbing my vibrator, but I don’t want to risk the whole damn school downstairs seeing it. I’ll have to come back for it another time. “What are you doing tonight?” I ask her.
“Hanging with my parents.” I hear her chew something. “I spent the day at the bakery. Taking some inventory, making some treats to leave my mom.”
“Heading back tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” she replies. “I’ll be back for the holidays, though.”
And I barely saw her while she was here.
“Sorry I got…kidnapped on you,” I tell her, not exactly forlorn at the time, considering the night ended amazingly, but now I’m pissed about it. She, Aro, and I were having fun at the rink.
But she says, “It’s okay. It’s been a good visit. My dad was happy to see Hunter last night. He actually smiled. Hunter, I mean.”
I nod, because I don’t know what else to do. “He went to your place too?” I ask. “After his Mom and Dad’s?”
“No, I was hanging with Jared. We drove to Madoc’s and ended up staying a while when Jax and Juliet showed up.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “Hunter and A.J. played hide and seek outside for like two hours, and then we all joined in, but it sort of fizzled out when Jax started making out with Juliet and forgot to seek the rest of us.”
I smile, picturing them all hiding behind rocks and in trees for half an hour.
“We were all up until midnight,” she continues. “It was like old times, except for you and Kade not being there.”
Midnight?
He was in the Falls until midnight?
“Kade wasn’t there either?” I ask her.
“I didn’t see him at all,” she tells me. “He went out after the game.”
I wander to the window, watching the rain drizzle down the glass and lightning flash across the sky. The rope up to my attic sways in the wind.
“Yeah,” I murmur.
And all at once, everything I already knew and shouldn’t have denied floods in.
I knew better.
And yes, I believed it so easily. Because it hurt. It made me sick to think of him not with me.
“We’ll catch up tomorrow,” I say. “I gotta go, okay?”
“’Night,” she chirps.
I hang up and slip my phone into my back pocket, gazing out the window.
He’s so stubborn. He’ll let me believe the worst of him, just like the time Gemma Ledger came out of his bedroom when we were sixteen.