Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 87804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
A smug little smile curls Noah’s lips. “That’s right, babe. Step off your high horse and take a good look at yourself before you go accusin’ me of something you’ve been guilty of for years.”
“It’s not the same thing!”
At this point everyone in the county is watching us. All I can do is hope no one is recording it. Otherwise, Katya is going to have a stroke.
“You’re right,” he bites out. “I don’t have millions to lose, endorsement deals. An entire career at stake.”
This argument is not going how I thought it would go. “My boyfriend is not going to sue me for sexual harassment.”
“You don’t know that. Feelings change. Relationships end––even when two people are meant for each other. Even between soulmates.”
That one word is a kick to the chest. The air leaves me all at once. He can’t possibly think that about us. Not after everything that’s happened, and certainly not now.
There was a time I would’ve called us soul mates. There was also a time I expected him to come to his senses, come looking for me, and make amends. And then years turned into a decade and I put aside the childish notion of soul mates and happily-ever-afters. I grew up. I moved on––or something like it.
“He wants to marry me.”
Noah’s eyes go from blazing to bleak in seconds. His posture loses all of its rigidity. As if I let the air out of him. I definitely burst whatever bubble he was working on.
“I don’t get you…I really don’t,” I mumble. Some, tiny particle of me hates to see him upset. Like a tiny, tiny portion.
He’s behaving like this is some big disappointment to him. It’s etched in the hard lines of his face, in the lips pressed together tightly, the scowl. He looks off into the distance, his jaw pulsing from the effort it takes him to keep his mouth shut.
We stand there idle for what seems like forever, with the sun beating down on the tent without mercy and the heat rising off the gravel burning my bare ankles. As the silence drags on, I start to fiddle nervously with the end of the cord fastening the Rowdy’s banner across the tent, waiting for him to say something, anything.
“Are you?” He looks lost, almost in a daze as he speaks. “Going to marry him.”
Each second that I don’t answer feels like an eternity. “I don’t know,” I finally admit.
Should I marry Oliver? Probably. We’ve never had a screaming match in the middle of a dusty parking lot. Or any public place for that matter. He’s never caused me so much pain I stopped eating for two weeks and had to be rushed to the hospital with an irregular heartbeat. But he’s also never made me feel like I was the only person on the planet when he looks at me and he’s sure as hell never called me his soul mate either.
Eyes cast down, he nods absently. “I gotta get back.”
Chapter Ten
Maren
There were plenty of growing pains along the way to becoming more than friends. And yet they were easily overshadowed by profound acts of kindness, moments where Noah became the boy I put on a pedestal. When I watched him in real time become the person I imagined him to be. Those are the ones permanently written in Sharpie marker across my heart. They haven’t faded, or lost their significance over the years. No matter how much I cursed him. No matter how many tears I shed.
I was a late bloomer. And in that period before the late bloom, around my thirteenth birthday, I was not cute and dainty like Annabelle. I tended to be on the stout side, and even that’s putting it kindly. Couple the beefy thighs with the braces and my hair cut short which I couldn’t keep long because I washed my hair a lot due to my active lifestyle and let’s just say I wasn’t winning any beauty contests.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t interested in beauty contests. I was interested in sports. It wouldn’t have even crossed my mind to care what I looked like.
I was leaning against the locker of one of the other girls on my tennis team, waiting for her to go to practice, when a boy I’d never spoken to––mostly because he was either sneering or scowling at me––walked up.
Towering over me, he stared with hard, opaque eyes. As nervous as I was, our mothers knew each other so I took a chance. “Hi,” I said, smiling.
His scowl deepened. He obviously did not like my metallic smile, and he liked me saying hi even less. “You’re leaning against my locker.”
This boy intimidated me and I didn’t want to give him any reason to pick on me the way he picked on some of the other kids in our grade. I tried to move out of his way as quickly as possible but before I could take a step, he boxed me in.