Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 63563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“Yes.”
I know he means no. Or maybe he does mean yes, but I know it won’t happen. I can’t remember the last time I did something normal with my dad. It was when he still had his paper, and everything wasn’t good, but it was still better than it is now. That was the last time.
I place a kiss on my dad’s forehead and let myself out. I feel as heavy as I do after every single time I leave here. Everyone talks about the sins of the father, but the things that happened to my dad weren’t sins as it’s not the sins being visited on me. Rather, it’s the burdens because I feel the burden of my dad’s grief, his loss, and what he sees as his failure. If the house wasn’t paid off, I know my dad would lose it. As it is, he doesn’t have much of his savings left to keep covering the bills, and he has no health insurance. We’re just one step away from a big fucking disaster, and I feel the burden of that too.
As I walk down the driveway and back to the car, I somehow manage to have my head lifted like I have a bit of my pride left. I slip into the passenger seat and wear my seatbelt as Ash looks at me, a thousand questions brimming in his eyes. The car smells like him—rich and manly. If muscles had a smell, then the car would smell like male muscles. As it is, even with all the pine swirling deliciously around me like the blue smoke of a fragrant fire deep in the woods with a thousand tall trees overlooking it, I ignore Ash. I turn my face to the window and say nothing the rest of the way home.
Not home. I meant back to Ash’s house. To the French Quarter.
CHAPTER 10
Ash
Ellis might have been silent in the car, but when we enter the house via the living room and not the kitchen—thank god because it lacks sharp and heavy objects—she turns and lets me have it.
“Why couldn’t you just wait in the car?”
I’m not getting into a blazing fight with her even though I can see by the furious smoke tendrils trailing from her ears—okay, maybe I can’t see it, but I do imagine it—and the sparks shooting from her eyes—also not real, but dangerously close—that she’s ready to engage in one.
My happy stick jumps joyously, but the rest of me refuses to notice how wonderfully attractive Ellis becomes when she’s flushed like this. Not that she’s not attractive. Because she is. She’s very attractive the rest of the time too. My tight balls have indicated that such a thing is indeed a fact, whether I’m aware of it in the upper regions of my gray matter or not.
“Now you’ve seen everything, and you know everything,” Ellis hisses in the kind of tone that indicates I’m entirely responsible for seeing and knowing and also causing. I know she doesn’t like me. I know she thinks I’m rich and spoiled. I just don’t know why she has this deep and abiding dislike for me, which I can see very plainly written across her face.
“That’s quite an accusation.” I still refuse to rise to the fight she wants to have. Instead, I close the six-foot gap between us, and she doesn’t step back. She crosses her arms over her chest, pushing up the sodden blouse she has on. It didn’t dry out much in the car, even though I was blasting the AC the whole way back. The blouse is black, so it’s not translucent, but it’s plastered to her, and the shape of her breasts, her narrow waist, and the gentle hourglass curl of her hips are pretty obvious.
My meat stick thanks the dishwater while my eyes thank the gods.
When said eyes flick back up to her face and see how her anger is thinly veiling her absolute misery, my stomach plummets. I don’t know if it’s the ring or if it’s just the obvious thing to do, but I open my arms and enfold them around her. She’s as stiff as…well…my joystick at the moment, but let’s not go there because this isn’t the trashy kind of hug that comes with expectations.
“What are you doing?” she asks from against my chest. She doesn’t make a move to pull away, and she doesn’t lift a knee to kick me in the balls. She doesn’t spit at me, literally or verbally.
“You looked like you needed a hug, so I’m giving you one.”
“You’re just doing it because you pity me.” Yup. The voice from my chest is absolutely miserable, and it’s also filled with exhaustion and vulnerability. Ellis must be seriously tired to sound like that because the Ellis I know is a spitfire. The Ellis I know doesn’t do vulnerable.