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)
Playing soccer at school; working out on the manor grounds; running in the early morning on the streets.
All tanned and glistening, looking like the end of June even in the snow.
And disgustingly so that I’d always stare at him even though he made me hatesick.
Which means he’s right.
I wouldn’t be able to handle it if he took his t-shirt off and flashed me his very beautiful and sculpted, soccer god of a body. In my bedroom no less.
Oh my God, he’s in my bedroom right now.
I mean, I knew that.
I just didn’t think of the implications.
I guess I just… wanted to see him so badly that it didn’t occur to me that he shouldn’t be here in the first place. If we get caught after I’ve made the promise to never ever see him, my parents are only going to hate him even more.
“You can’t be here,” I blurt out, determined to protect him now.
Something about my words or maybe the way I’ve said them, all breathily and yet urgently, strikes a chord in him. Not the emotional kind. The kind that’s made of one part mischief, two parts danger and three parts amusement.
“Yeah?” His eyes glitter. “Why not?”
“Because my parents are asleep just down the hall.”
Wrong thing to say.
Because that just makes him even more interested. It makes him straighten up from the desk, as if he’s getting ready to pounce. “So?”
I move back.
Again, the wrong thing to do.
Because somehow my good girl-ness triggers his bad boy-ness.
But I can’t help it. I don’t know how else to be.
That I feel something skating up and down my spine, something like thrill, is a fact I’m choosing to ignore. Because this shouldn’t be thrilling. This is a big, big risk that he’s taking and he needs to understand that and leave.
“So if my dad finds out that you’re here, then —”
“He’ll beat me up.”
“Yes.”
“Probably try to kill me too.”
“He w-will.”
“I’m not that easy to kill though.”
“But you are.”
“Yeah, how’s that?”
“Because you’ll let him. That’s how.”
I feel something clashing at my back. The bedpost.
Because all this time, he was inching closer and I was moving back.
A dance of a sort.
That my good girl-ness succumbs to when he is close.
“Like you did that night,” I continue, studying his healing bruises that my dad is going to make worse if he finds out Reign’s up here, in my bedroom. “Because don’t think that I don’t know. I know now. I know that you didn’t stop my dad, didn’t say a word even though you could’ve. Even though for all intents and purposes, you’re my dad’s boss too. And I also know that you did all that because you felt guilty. You felt that it was your fault, what happened. When it’s crazy and not at all true. And you can say no a million times but I’m going to prove it. So you have to leave. Now.”
It’s like he can’t hear me.
Or rather he can, he just doesn’t care.
Because my second outburst of the night — God, why can’t I calm down when he’s close; why do I have like zero chill when it comes to this guy — makes him smile.
Not a smirk but an actual, genuine if small-ish smile.
He tilts his head to the side, his eyes alive and on me. “You know, you’re breaking my heart right now.”
“You don’t… You don’t have a heart. You’re heartless.”
Lies.
He’s anything but heartless. I know that now.
He puts a hand on his chest. “Well, whatever it is, it’s racing right now.”
I swallow shakily, remembering his exact same words from the night of The Horny Bard. “I hope it’s racing fast enough for a heart attack.”
He chuckles and my belly flutters. “I come all this way for you and this is the welcome I get.”
“I’m trying to save your life, you idiot. And I didn’t call.”
Another lie.
Probably bigger than my first one.
“I came anyway. And let’s do this once again, I don’t need you to save me.”
“I —”
“Although you can’t help it, can you?”
“Can’t help what?”
“This. Being such a good girl.”
“I-I am a good girl.”
“I know. Always trying to fix things, save them.”
“That’s not —”
“It’s a tragedy really.”
“W-why?”
He lowers his voice. “Because good girls are not much fun.”
“That’s not… That’s not true.”
“No?”
“I’m plenty fun,” I say lamely.
He hums, his eyes all kinds of alive. “Not as much fun as other St. Mary’s girls.”
“What?”
“But it is what it is, I guess.” Then, stepping back, “Goodnight, Echo.”
He takes another step back but my hand reaches out on its own and grabs him.
I’m not even going to think about how my fingers just latch on to him, his t-shirt at his waist.
Or that something inside of me slides into place.
Now that I’m touching him, his heat.
Instead I focus on what he just said. “What?”
He glances down at my puny grip like he always does, probably to emphasize exactly how puny and repeats my word, only calmly. “What?”