Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
I felt Keegan trembling in my hold, and in some ways, it helped me ignore my own discomfort with the question.
15
Keegan
I’d been nervous about seeing Owen again after we’d messed around.
No messing around, except for emergencies, in which case we could definitely share blowjobs and handjobs…and maybe kisses.
Whatever the hell it took to get my mouth around O’s cock was worth it, because fuck that had tasted so good. And then when he’d blown in my mouth, it was so thick and there was so much that I had to get a good gulp to get it all down.
Despite how amazing the experience was, I feared how Owen would feel about what we’d done.
Did he have doubts? Regrets?
I was glad when the interview prep finally ended and Frederick and Bryan left Owen and me alone to chat.
“Are you okay?” he asked, offering me a bottle of water before sitting back on the sofa beside me, much closer than we’d initially sat before Bryan had encouraged us to scoot closer together. Made me kind of wish Owen had his arm back around me, the way that had offered me so much comfort when Bryan had asked his question.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry I got weird after Bryan brought up our pasts.”
“It’s not bad that you reacted the way you did. I was surprised by it too. These are people we loved, who we still love, even if we can’t have them in our lives anymore.”
I nodded. “Might seem like a strange time for me to mention this, but I used to get bullied a lot in elementary school.” Owen clenched his jaw and balled his hand into a fist, still listening, but like he wanted to jump through some sort of memory time warp and kick some ass.
Normally, I would have been annoyed by some guy getting all overprotective, but admittedly, I kind of liked the way he was doing it, so I kept on. “You think I’m short now—I was tiny back then, especially compared to all the guys in my class. My hair was sort of all over the place. I could never get it to do anything or look like anyone else’s hair. There were a lot of weird things about me, but now that I’m older, I don’t think it was those kinds of things that made them pick on me. It’s almost like they could tell that all I wanted to do was fit in, so that was the last thing in the world they were going to let me do.”
“Did they hurt you?” he asked.
“Not anything serious, but there was teasing and shoving me around presumably by accident. I can’t say I had it as bad as others. I’m not trying to be all woe-is-me about it, but my point was, I didn’t have a lot of friends, so my family was everything. And Crawford always encouraged and supported me, never made me feel strange or like there was something wrong with me. When I was seven, I had this game I’d play where I’d sneak into Nance’s room and wear her high heels. Don’t even know how I knew, but I had this feeling I couldn’t let anyone know what I was doing. And one day I wanted to try on some of her lipstick. It just so happened that Crawford arrived home early that day, and before I knew it, I was caught red-handed, literally…and with some actually managing to get on my lips too.”
Tears stirred in my eyes, and I batted them away quickly. Owen’s arm found its way around me, just as it had during the interview prep.
“His eyes got wide. He was clearly shocked, and I wanted to make up an excuse, but I couldn’t even speak. I just started crying, and the first thing I could manage to say was that I was sorry. I was sure he and Nance wouldn’t love me anymore. And if I didn’t have them or Jace, I didn’t have anybody. He came to me, and he put his arms around me and held me close, telling me it was okay over and over again, even though I couldn’t stop crying. I guess when he realized I’d calmed down, he finally pulled away, looked at me, and said, ‘Keeg, there’s nothing wrong with wantin’ to feel beautiful.’”
And I fucking lost it, just like I had back then, tears flowing.
Fuckin’ A.
I wiped at my eyes some more, trying to spit out my point in telling O that story. “Because that was the kind of guy he was. He was so amazing, and it wasn’t fair. He was a firefighter, so we’d had our share of scares, but after that fire stole him… Nance, Jace, my world of all these strong people became so vulnerable, and I felt so defeated. For a long time, I didn’t know if I’d ever get better.”