Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
He grinned. “Yeah.”
“You’re worried that I’m here feeling confused after…” She pointed down to the floor, indicating the lower level. “After that.”
“A wise woman once told me, if I can’t talk about it, I shouldn’t be doing it.”
“A wise woman, huh?” Ren asked, pinning him with a raised brow.
He swallowed, warring with the instinct to take back the way he’d opened the subject. Finally, he said, “Her name is Mary. She’s one of the reasons I’m going to Nashville.”
“Is she a friend?”
Friend, mother, savior…His thoughts trailed off. “She’s a lot of things,” he admitted.
Ren’s expression crashed, and Fitz realized how it had sounded. “No, no. Mary is in her sixties,” he told her, and he could immediately see the way her eyes grew hungry, wanting more. But his stomach growled loudly, and they both laughed. “For another time, apparently.” Ren looked like she wanted to protest, so Fitz spoke before she could. “How about we order room service and have a slumber party?” He patted the mattress at his hip. “We get to Nashville tomorrow. You’re going to miss our roomie routine.”
“You can’t be serious,” she said, but she was grinning. “This is only a double bed.”
“Like you said, I barely move all night anyway.”
“Yesterday you looked like you wanted to crawl out of your skin because we had to share a bed twice this size.”
“Because I wanted to kiss you so bad,” he blurted.
Ren’s lips parted, her hand going lax and dropping the towel to the floor. “You what?”
“Yeah, I—” He pushed up onto his elbows, skin prickling with nerves. “It was one thing to share a room before then, but in the same bed…I worried I’d wake up wrapped around you.”
Her cheeks flushed again. “Fitz.”
“I mean…am I off base here?” Putting himself out there was terrifying, an emotional rope bridge over a yawning canyon, but he shoved the words out. “That wasn’t a normal kiss, Ren.”
“It wasn’t?”
He laughed out an incredulous “No way.” Swallowing, he took a breath and threw himself into the void. “Are you feeling this, too?”
“You mean, am I feeling like all I want to do is be near you every second?”
He nodded, choking out a relieved “Yeah.”
“Yes. I’m feeling it, too.”
All of a sudden, he realized how this probably looked to her: Fitz inviting himself in, lounging on her bed. “I don’t want you to feel pressured. Shit—I can go back to my room. This isn’t about kissing or whatever. I mean, it is, but it isn’t just about that. I promise I won’t try anything.”
She shook her head, biting back a smile at his babble. “I don’t want you to go back to your room.”
He exhaled a long breath. “Then go shower. I’ll find us a movie to watch.”
Fitz had made a lot of bad choices in his life. He’d lied, he’d borrowed a few things that didn’t belong to him, he’d talked his way out of trouble or into places where he should never have set foot. The first time he clearly remembered breaking a rule was in the second grade. He’d just been placed with Mary. His pants were too short, his ears were too big, he’d been to three different schools that year alone and was just plain lonely. Bullies can smell that kind of desperation, and Fitz absolutely reeked of it.
When a couple of older kids sat next to him at lunch, he was starstruck. He hadn’t yet mastered the art of indifference and was immediately and clearly on board with whatever it was they had in mind.
Turns out what they had in mind was that it would be funny if they all pulled the fire alarm. It wasn’t the kind of thing Fitz would do, normally—he’d bounced around the foster system for four years by then, and if anything, his vibe was more to fly under the radar whenever possible—but it seemed like a worthy price to pay to gain a few friends. Unfortunately, when the siren blared and everyone began filing into the halls, Fitz was the only one left standing near the alarm. His wingmen had left him holding the figurative bag and fled to their respective classrooms, where they would be accounted for. Fitz was suspended for a week.
But there was an unintended consequence. The fire department came, and everyone got to go home early. He was in trouble, sure, but suddenly he was also cool. People wanted to be his friend. He learned a lesson that day that has served him well: Sometimes bad decisions can turn into something very, very good.
In the clear light of morning, he wondered if coming down to Ren’s room should be lumped in with this brand of bad decision. Because waking up curled around her, with his hand beneath the hem of her shirt and resting against the warm, soft skin of her stomach, all he wanted was to bail on every other plan he’d made for the week—for his life—and stay in that bed with Ren forever.