Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 49239 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 246(@200wpm)___ 197(@250wpm)___ 164(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49239 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 246(@200wpm)___ 197(@250wpm)___ 164(@300wpm)
“She wasn’t married yet. And she texted her fiancé that she was having second thoughts.”
“Okay, Mr. Morally Gray.” Ben turns back around.
“What the fuck? I’m morally gray?”
He turns back around. “Yeah, you’re the exact definition of it. Too bad to be considered good, but too good to be considered bad.”
“At least I didn’t steal my twin brother’s wife.”
He smiles. “They were never married. And I know who I am. Call me morally dead if you want. I don’t give a fuck. I know the truth.”
He turns around to sit in his seat and I scowl at nothing. He’s right—his accusation that I’m morally gray wouldn’t bother me so much if there wasn’t truth to it.
Fuck it. We can’t all be choirboys. I’m not a bad guy just because I haven’t wanted to settle down and have a family yet. I’m still in my prime—loving the game of hockey and banking a hell of a lot of money playing it. Maybe when I’m older, I’ll want something different, but for now, I’m good.
I spot Tess’s van in the player lot at the community college as soon as our bus from the airport pulls in. Not wanting to deal with questions from my teammates about who she is and why she’s here, I take my time getting my bag so they’re on the way to their cars before I walk over to Tess.
Her window is down. She doesn’t smile when she sees me, but she doesn’t look like she wants me dead, either. I’ll take it.
“Hey,” I say. “How are you guys?”
“Good.”
She manually cranks up the window of her ancient van and gets out, Zane stepping out of the passenger side.
“So what’s he doing?” Tess asks me.
“Sweeping.” I make eye contact with Zane. “Ready to work?”
He glares silently, like I’m the one who lifted his wallet instead of the guy he ripped off.
“Okay, great,” I say with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “The door I’ve got a key to is this way.”
I lead them to a side entrance, not bothering to drop my bag off at my car. The mechanic shop fixed it while I was out of town and returned it to the lot for me.
“Hey, um...thanks for doing this,” Tess says as we walk inside the building.
“Yeah, no problem.”
She looks more relaxed than the last time I saw her. She’s wearing black leggings and a lightweight, dark-gray hoodie, her hair loose around her shoulders. I like her face makeup-free—she’s naturally pretty.
“You good with a broom, man?” I ask Zane.
He just looks back at me silently. Tess makes a humming sound, filling in the awkward pause. “It’s his mother’s primary mode of transportation, so yeah...he’s great with a broom.”
Before I left for my road trip, I talked to the head of maintenance for the college and arranged for Zane to sweep all the concrete floors before the janitorial staff does it. If he does a good job, they’ll have an easy day of work.
I give him his instructions and he sets to work. A few minutes later, I find Tess sitting on the bleachers that make up the student section during college games here.
“Hey,” she says, looking up from her phone screen.
I sit down next to her. “Hey. How’s it going?”
She groans. “Apparently, our dryer is broken, and my daughter needs to bring an authentic French dish to school tomorrow. Of course she waited until the day before to tell me.”
“Do you have help with the kids?”
It’s my indirect way of asking if she’s single.
“I have my sister Cam. We live together.”
She didn’t mention a man, which is a green light for me.
“Oh, nice. And how old is your daughter?”
“She’s twelve going on thirty. And Cam has eight-year-old twin boys.”
“Wow, four kids in one house? You guys must be busy.”
She laughs. “That’s an understatement. Cam’s studying to be a paralegal and she works part-time. Our monthly schedule takes up the entire front of the fridge.”
Our eyes meet and a flicker of awareness hits me right in the chest. Tess is beautiful. And unlike most of the women I meet, she’s being herself. She seems like a great mom, which I never realized was something I’d find so sexy.
“Do you, uh...I mean, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you don’t look anywhere near old enough to have a fifteen-year-old.”
“I was sixteen when I had Zane.”
I nod, not knowing what to say about that.
“It was a good thing,” she says. “My parents helped so I could finish high school. But I loved that kid from the moment I saw him. He gave me a purpose.”
“Things didn’t work out with his dad?”
She wrinkles her nose in a look of disgust. “We were together for nine years. When Zane was eight and Hannah was five, we got divorced.”
“His loss.”
She arches her brows and smiles. “How do you know? Maybe I’m the worst.”