Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
No, a nightmare.
If I’m seeing what I’m seeing then it’s definitely a nightmare.
Because what I’m seeing, or rather who I’m seeing, lives there.
His eyes live there.
Reddish brown and so unique with crazy thick eyelashes.
That jaw, square and sculpted and stubbled.
Perpetually tight and clenched. Offended.
Like I make his life difficult simply by existing.
So yeah, a nightmare.
Only I don’t remember falling asleep and I don’t think he ever talks in my nightmares. He’s too busy shooting me condescending and hateful glares.
But he’s talking now.
His lips are moving and oh my God, this is not a nightmare at all. This is worse. This is reality.
He is here.
Here.
Outside of my bedroom window.
“Open the window.”
I shudder at his words. At his gravelly and deep voice, now that I can hear it.
Squinting at his crouched form, I try to speak. “What the…”
“Open the window.”
“What?”
Finally he seems to be getting to the end of his patience with me and that stubbled jaw of his clenches. “Open the fucking window.”
“How did you…” I shake my head. “What are you doing out there?”
“Trying to get you to open this fucking window.”
“Why… I don’t…” I shake my head again and breathe deep. “Why didn’t you use the front door?”
I don’t think that’s the right question, given how absurd and bizarre this is.
Him, outside my window. Him, on a branch of that tree outside my window.
“How did you even get up there?” I ask then, without giving him the chance to answer.
He shoots me a look. “How do you think? I climbed.”
“You climbed?”
His jaw clenches again. And that’s the extent of his response.
“But it’s a tree,” I add.
“Hence the climbing.” Then, “Unless you think I’ve got magical powers and I can fly, that’s pretty much what you do with a fucking tree. You climb it.”
Okay, not two minutes, not two freaking minutes, into this conversation and I want to strangle him.
“You’re such a —”
“And you really think your parents would’ve let me in? If I had knocked at your front door.”
No, not at all.
I don’t think my parents would’ve let him in.
They’re both downstairs right now, watching TV, winding down for the night after a long day of work in his family’s employ. If their boss’s second son had showed up at the door, they would’ve freaked out and slammed it in his face. Because my parents are the best and they know everything, all the rumors about him and about how he’s treated me all these years. Which means they would’ve sent him away and given him a piece of their minds.
Even at the risk of losing their jobs.
I sigh and he takes that as my agreement to the point he made.
Then, in a softer and somehow also rougher voice, “Open the window, Bubblegum.”
And the breath that escapes me then is all shivery and trembling.
Bubblegum.
His name for me.
It’s been exactly three years since he called me that.
The last time was the night of my thirteenth birthday. And today, I turn sixteen and I…
I hated that name.
I did.
And I hate that he’s calling me by it. Probably to throw me off or something. So I get my trembles under control and, reaching forward, I open the window and immediately step back as he enters my bedroom.
This is so absurd, isn’t it?
I haven’t seen him in a year, not since he went away to college last year. Since then he hasn’t been back, not even for the holidays. Which is not really out of the norm and now he’s standing in my bedroom.
What is he doing here?
“Is this the first time you’ve been back? Since you went away to college,” I ask, watching him rake his fingers through his hair, which I realize has grown out even more.
His surfer’s hair, only dark.
“Why,” he asks, his reddish-brown eyes flashing, “did you miss me?”
“Yes,” I tell him, taking in his sharply honed, slightly more mature features. “I missed you like I miss getting stabbed in the eye.”
He rakes his eyes over my features. “Very wild for someone very…”
“Very what?”
“Pink.” Then, “And girly. And good.”
“Well, I’m a girl and I’m good, so,” I say in a prickly tone. “And from what I remember I told you not to call me that.”
At my words, his lips tilt up slightly. “If you remember that then you probably also remember that I never really cared about what you told me.”
“That’s because you’re selfish, arrogant and despicable.”
“More synonyms to describe me,” he murmurs. “Nice to see that I still take up way too much room in your pretty little head.”
“You do not —”
“Besides,” he continues over me, “still can’t blame me for calling you that, can you?”
“What?”
Instead of answering me, he looks down. At my dress.
And before I can stop myself, I blush.
Because of course, my dress is pink.
And I hate that he can so easily make me do that. He can so easily make me blush and leave me breathless.