Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
That bought him my attention again.
My attention with squinty eyes.
“You got a problem with smart girls?” I asked sharply.
“Well…” he shrugged, “yeah.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Why?” I rapped out.
“Babe, if they’re smart, they can figure you out. Not everyone is level-headed, even keeled and adjusted like Mo,” Mag returned. “I don’t need some smart girl figuring out my shit. I can’t even figure out my shit. What I know is, my shit is such shit, I don’t want it figured out.”
“Has it occurred to you that if you had a smart girl around, she might help you with that?” I asked.
“As he said, this would require him wanting his shit sorted, and Mag prefers to be a hot mess,” Axl declared. “And not because he doesn’t want to figure out his shit. Because him not doing that is a woman magnet.”
“The broken one they think they can fix,” Auggie added.
“Better that than the lost puppy,” Mag fired at Auggie.
“That’s me,” he said through a grin. “All ready to go to a good home. Happy just to be fed and watered. But I’ll perform for treats.”
I looked to Mo. “How do you put up with this shit?”
“It’s a lot easier to tune out when I got a beer in my hand and some game is on TV,” he replied.
I’d bet.
“What are you all doing here anyway?” I asked the boys.
“Moral support,” Axl said.
“Preparing you for the Morrison women onslaught,” Boone said at the same time.
Onslaught?
There was going to be an onslaught?
Every fiber of my body grew tight.
“Jesus Christ, when are you motherfuckers gonna stop being scared of my sisters?” Mo demanded to know.
Scared?
These badass commandos were scared of Mo’s sisters?
“When they stop bein’ scary,” Mag pointed out.
“You get, Mag, that they’re only scary because they’ve figured out your shit,” Mo returned.
“Yeah. There you go. Fuckin’ terrifying,” Mag replied.
“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” I chanted.
Here I was again.
Nervous!
I’d met boyfriends’ families. And okay, if I cared about them, I got nervous.
But not like this.
No other way to say it.
I was a wreck.
“I’m gonna kill every motherfucking one of you,” Mo threatened, sounding like he’d do it.
After he did, I felt his fingers curl around my chin and he used them to pull my head around and tip it back.
I blinked up at him.
“Look at me, sweetheart,” he urged gently.
“I am,” I choked out nervously.
“Okay, focus on me,” he amended.
I tried to do that.
When I somewhat succeeded, I felt the boys had surrounded me.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Mo declared.
“What if they don’t like me?” I asked. “I can’t have them not liking me, Mo. They’re part of you. They’re blood. They’re sisters. I have a sister!” My voice was rising with the increased beating of my heart which was keeping pace with the increased level of my panic. “I know how important sisters are! If they don’t like me, I’m gone. I can’t have that. Ohmigod!” That last was nearly yelled. “You beat up your dad for one of them. If they don’t like me, I’m not even a memory.”
I lost his attention as his eyes slid up and did a half circle and his lips growled, “Yup. Gonna kill every motherfucking one of you.”
“Babe,” I heard Boone call.
I pulled my chin from Mo’s hold only to have my body tucked into Mo’s hold a different way (this being with his arm) as I turned my head to look up at Boone.
“You may or may not believe this. Regardless, it’s true,” Boone started. “To get Mo, the tougher wall you had to climb was us.”
He jerked his chin to the others and I shifted in Mo’s clinch so I had my back to his front and I could take them all in.
“You might not have noticed, you bein’ you, together like you are, sure of yourself, but I threw down with you practically the minute I laid eyes on you,” Mag reminded me.
He did that. It was semi-subtle, in the sense it was not like getting hit by a freight train, more like getting hit by a bus.
But he did it.
“I know,” I told him.
“You won me over in about a minute,” Mag told me something I knew at the time, and was happy about at the time, but being reminded of it in this time made me feel a whole lot better.
He wasn’t done.
“It was you bein’ pissed Mo’s dad is a dick. It was hearing about you takin’ on Tammy. It was you bein’ hilarious. It was knowin’ we were gonna have a beautiful woman among us who was also one of the guys. But most of all, it was the way you were with Mo. First time at our place, it was like you’d been there a hundred times before and you two were just chill.” Mag shot me a grin. “Outside you shoutin’ about his dad. Mo was goin’ through his mail and you were shoutin’ about his dad and you were all about him. I had to push it, ’cause he’s my boy. But I didn’t have to push hard.”