Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2) Read Online Kristen Ashley

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Biker, Chick Lit, Contemporary, MC, Romance Tags Authors: Series: Wild West MC Series by Kristen Ashley
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Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
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His gaze darted from the cookies to me.

“That’s it? We’re together over a year, you decide we’re done, you kick my ass out and we’re done?”

And again, I wanted to scream.

I also wanted to cry.

Because he spoke truth. We’d been together for over a year.

I went there with him at first because he was good-looking.

I stuck around because he was funny, smart, interesting, and at the time, attentive.

He was also a mover and shaker.

He was an attorney, and his goal was to make full partner by the time he was thirty-five. It was a huge firm, which had been around for sixty years. The youngest they’d made someone a partner was at forty-two. It seemed an impossible goal, but he was going for it.

I liked a man with drive, ambition, because I was that kind of woman.

A woman with drive.

A woman with ambition.

He was also in killer student loan debt, and even though he made good money, he was living on the cheap because he wanted them out of his life. He could sacrifice. He could save. He could be responsible.

I was a woman who could sacrifice, save, be responsible.

He dressed great, and because he worked hard, he played harder. He didn’t waste the small amount of downtime he had. He was busy and he was social, he had good taste in music and movies, and he made it a priority, being with me.

I had yet to have an excellent lover, and I knew that regardless of the fact I had yet to have one.

But he didn’t suck in bed. He cared that I orgasmed, and he put effort into it, so that was a plus.

In the beginning, even though I was young, too young (in my estimation) to commit, (I was twenty-three), I thought there might be a possibility I’d found my man.

So I might know my own mind, and that mind was made up we were over, but this wasn’t easy for me.

I just wasn’t going to cry and moan and whine and beg in front of him.

I’d deal with those feelings when he left.

And this was another indication that he didn’t get it.

Any of it.

“This isn’t easy for me, Bryan,” I told him.

“Could have fooled me, babe,” he returned.

Okay, this had to end.

“You know, unless you clue in, yes, I’m going to say it, unless you grow up and make changes, one day, you’re going to find a woman. And you’re going to be able to hold on to her because she will love you more than she loves herself. And that is not a good thing, Bryan.”

He stared at me.

I kept talking.

“Then, somewhere down the line, you’re going to look at her and see the light is out in her eyes. She might find things to bicker with you about that make no sense, because they’re not what really matters. She’ll just be bitter she didn’t stand up for herself, she didn’t stop it before it was too late, and she’s going to find ways to take that out on you. But what really mattered was that every day, in little ways, you showed her she was not important to you, and she put up with it. You did what you liked, and she sucked it up, because she’d asked and asked, and you didn’t care enough to make the effort.”

The flush was coming back to his face.

I kept going.

“Eventually, you treating her like she’s not important will drive home the fact that she’s not. She’ll start believing it. And because she’s not important, she needs you. Because…who else would have her? She’s not worthy. She’s going to be a shell of her former self, striking out at random, making your life miserable, and you’re going to wonder what happened to the lively, awesome chick you first met, not understanding you buried her under your own shit. And it’s highly likely from there, you’ll scrape her off and find someone else you can smother with your neglect and self-absorption.”

I watched him swallow, but he still didn’t speak.

I wasn’t holding high hopes for his bid to make partner if he couldn’t even state his own damn case to his girlfriend.

But that was beside the point.

And I wasn’t done.

“Or maybe you’ll remember this conversation, and you’ll realize the person you spend time with deserves for you to listen when they speak and give a damn about what they say. For you to take it into consideration. For you to make minor adjustments in your behavior to be a good partner and prove to the person you’re sharing time with she means something to you. And I hope that happens for you, Bryan. But I’m not putting in any more work. Someone else is going to have to guide your way on that. I have my own life to live, and I’m not going to do it in clothes that smell like pizza and stale beer because the guy I like needs me to tutor him in how to give a shit about me.”


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