Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
I know there’s a sofa by the bookshelves that pulls out in his office, right near the full bath and I know he’s stayed in his office more than once. But that’s not his home. I have no idea what his home looks like.
“You not going to answer?”
“What?” I peek up and Scarlet’s fists are on her hip, pushing in the baggy cream sweater she wears. Even with it not being formfitting, she looks small under the sweater. With black leggings she appears casual and laid back, unlike her raised brow.
“I asked if you guys were really involved,” she questions with a knowing smirk.
“Yeah … we’re … involved more than just sex, I think.”
“Like he could take you home one day and show you off at a family dinner?”
My stomach flutters at the thought of that. “Does it scare you?” Scarlet questions when I don’t answer.
I remain silent. I don’t want to talk about the things that scare me. I run my fingertips over a set of sheets with a high thread count and then I look at the price tag. My eyes go wide. I’ve never spent that much money on sheets.
“What’s going on, Braelynn? If you won’t tell me, let me see your phone.”
“There’s nothing on it.” We reach the end of the aisle and turn around. There’s a whole other side to choose from. The sheets on this side are pricey at this end and will get cheaper as we go back down. Pink? No, maybe not, though it is a gorgeous pale color. It’s quite girly and I’m not sure I want my first place to look … childish. And it could absolutely come off childish if I go with pink. So the sheets go back and I keep looking. I don’t want anything satin. I would feel like I was about to slide off the bed.
“No dick pics?”
I choke on a sip of my latte and have to pat my chest to get the coughing to stop. I can’t imagine what kind of pictures Declan would send to me … or take of me. The things we do together don’t lend themselves to cute selfies that you share with your friends. Scarlet laughs at me. “Okay, no pics. Let me see the messages, then. How is he texting you?”
I unlock my phone, find his name in the list of messages, and hand it over to her. My heart races. This is something I’m used to doing with girlfriends. We all hand around our phones and analyze the texts that men send to us. But this feels different. It’s Declan, and Scarlet works for him too. “It’s simple,” I tell her, as if in apology. I’m not really apologizing. He’s not a man who goes on and on in texts.
“Love is in the details,” she says, shaking her hair back away from her face. “You keep looking at the sheets and let me look at these.”
I try to go back to shopping, but I can’t stop stealing glances at her and gauging her expression. I want to know if she sees something that I missed in the messages Declan has sent me.
The way I feel for him obscures a lot. It’s confirmation bias, we see what we want to see. I’m sure I do. There’s a constant lurking fear of his world and all the darkness that lies there, but as soon as I see his name on the screen, heat overwhelms me. I want him to text me so much that I could have missed red flags. Scarlet scrolls and scrolls, not giving away anything although at one point she narrows her eyes. I lift another set of sheets off the shelves and close my eyes. I try to imagine slipping into bed between them, but instead something else pops into my head. Declan, his arms crossed over his chest and a half grin on his face, looking down at these sheets. On my bed. Maybe he would turn back the covers and run his hand over them too. What did you buy these for, little pet? he would ask.
A shiver runs down my shoulders and I fucking love it.
I open my eyes again and look at Scarlet. She has the straw of her Starbucks in her mouth. The cup is in one hand and my phone is in the other. I’m about to say something when the phone rings.
“Shit.” Scarlet’s face goes white, all the color draining away in an instant. “Oh my God.” She’s really shaken. The ringer isn’t loud, but there is a good volume to it. I had it off silent so I could use it for an alarm this morning. She almost drops her drink, but catches it at the last second and shoves the phone back into my hand.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I say, trying to laugh it off and lighten the mood. “It’s an unknown number. We won’t worry about it.”