Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
A black truck was backing up, but it stopped. I didn’t know if he saw me or not—the windows were tinted. I ran toward it. I needed to know.
The window rolled down, and the orange glow from the cigarette in his mouth was the only light.
There were so many questions racing through my head, but only one mattered.
“Does he really love me?” I blurted out.
“He did,” Thatcher said with his cigarette clenched in his teeth. “Reckon only you can find out if he still does.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “Go see him. Look him in the eyes. Tell him your side of the story and listen to his, like you should have done three weeks ago.”
“How do I know he will see me?” I threw up my arms in frustration. “He has gone out of his way to make sure that I’m barely scraping by to pay the bills.”
Thatcher took his cigarette out of his mouth. “There you go, assuming shit again. Blaming him for something when you have no goddamn proof. Was he the only one who could have rated your ass out? If you think Sebastian would have done that to you, then I’m right and you don’t fucking deserve him.”
He started to roll up the window.
“WAIT! Please. I need to see him to know. Where can I do that?”
Thatcher reached for something, then bent his head slightly before looking back at me and tossing a wadded-up piece of paper out the window. I missed it and turned to run go get it. Once I picked it up, I looked back to see the black truck pulling out and driving away.
Opening up the paper, I smoothed it out. An address, this Saturday’s date, and a time were scribbled on the page. Nothing more.
• Thirty-Seven •
She was jealous. That was good.
Sebastian
This was the first Breeders’ Cup I had missed in years. The last time, it had been because I was sick with the flu.
Fall sat in my lap as I stared up at the screen. Hughes Farm had a horse in the next race, but I couldn’t bring myself to give a damn.
Since she’d arrived, Fall had been trying to get me to fuck her. The top she’d been wearing was long gone, and she had taken my hand and put it between her legs to show me she was bare under her short skirt.
I played with her cunt to make her happy, but my head wasn’t in it. I was too sober. Her hair was too thin, her tits too hard, and she smelled like perfume. Determined to get my attention, she threw her leg over mine to straddle me, leaning closer to rub her nipples in my face.
“You know how much I love fucking with an audience,” she told me, then ran the tip of her tongue over her red lips.
I considered it. Maybe if I got the blonde who was with Teller right now and had two at one time. But the image in my head didn’t spur my interest either.
“Uh, Sebastian,” Wells called out.
I reached up to roll one of Fall’s nipples between my fingers, although they weren’t the right color either.
“What?” I asked, glancing at him.
He pointed the bottle of beer in his hand toward the door. “I’m gonna guess she’s here to see you.”
Shifting in my seat so I could see the door, I froze the moment my eyes locked on blue eyes that I couldn’t even drink out of my dreams at night.
“Oh, wow,” Fall said, rubbing her cunt against my jeans. “She’s hot. I’ll eat her pussy. You’d like to watch that, wouldn’t you?”
Royal stood there, her eyes shifting from me to Fall. The pain in her expression almost had me dumping Fall onto the floor and jumping up, but then I remembered. What she’d done. How she’d left me. Her lies.
She straightened her shoulders, and she lifted her chin slightly as she began walking toward me.
Fucking hell. What was she doing here?
I’d been sober going on forty-two hours now, and she was about to screw it up. Her hips swayed in the jeans she was wearing, and there was a sliver of her smooth, flat stomach showing beneath her long-sleeved crop top. I wouldn’t let her see me react to her. She wasn’t going to get to know what this did to me. Seeing her. Remembering the girl curled in my lap in the cabin while I read to her. The dirty words coming from that sweet mouth.
NO! She wasn’t fucking sweet. She’d played me.
“Sebastian.” My name coming from her mouth was torture.
“Don’t recall putting you on the guest list,” I replied, hating that everything in me wanted to touch her. Hold her. Beg her to tell me why. That she had a reason.
She glanced nervously at Fall, although she was trying to act as if a topless woman wasn’t straddling my lap, struggling with holding the fake smile in place.