Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“I lost track of time, Mad Max. You worry too much.”
“We can’t be too careful, Kitten. I’ve told you that.”
“It’s not me they’re after Max. If they find me, I’ll be fine, and you’ll know; they’d swarm the house looking for you,” she says, and her voice is tense.
I sit down on the sand beside her, watching the waves as they crash. I’ve lived in Florida my whole life, but never cared much about visiting the ocean. Since moving here with Tess, it has helped me breathe again.
“Do you want out? Is it time?” I ask her, needing to know if she’s done.
“Don’t ask me that, Max, not right now,” she says and that feeling in my chest blooms again. “I’m going back to the house to fix some dinner.”
“Why not right now? I told you to tell me when you had enough; when it became too much, or you just decided you didn’t want this any longer.”
“Yeah, you did. You covered your bases, Max. Relax, your conscience is clear.” She pulls away from my hold and stands, dusting the sand off of her jeans and starts walking back to the house.
“Stop. Don’t you go another fucking step, Tess.”
She stops and turns back to me, but her eyes are shooting fire.
“Are you done with this? Do you want out? They are simple questions woman, fucking answer them.”
“You are such a moron,” she says, before turning away again. Since we’ve been set up here, I’ve pretty much let things become smooth and easy with Tess. She’s dealing with a lot of shit because of me, and I haven’t wanted to rock the boat. But a woman, hell especially my woman, will not get away with that shit unless her ass is glowing red for it later. I follow and stop her before she reaches our back deck.
“What the hell, Tess? You want to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?”
“Why? What’s the point, Max? It wouldn’t matter anyway!”
“Because you just called me a moron? Because I need to know if you’re ending what we have? Because I deserve to know where your head is at? Name the fucking reason, Tess.”
“You are a moron!”
“Woman, I’m warning you!”
“Warning me of what, Max? What you should have warned me about is that you’re pigheaded, a male asshole through and through and I’m tired.”
“What is going on? Jesus, you were fine this morning when I left.”
“No Max, I was half comatose from three orgasms.”
“See, fine. I take care of you.”
“Ahhh! Seriously? That’s what you think makes a relationship work?”
“Tess. I don’t do relationships. Fuck, the most serious one I had, was with a borrowed club girl that made me sour on the whole damn deal and it fucked my life up so bad. I mean hell, I can’t even take you out on a damned date!”
“No Max, you fucked your life up. You make the decisions you make and to hell with what the rest of us think or feel.”
Her words hit me hard, and they taste bitter. I step back away from her as I take them in.
“Tess, you’re on dangerous ground here. We’ve only been together for a short time. You can’t start acting like you got my shit wrapped around your finger. I am not that man. I will never be that man.”
“We’ve been together almost a month! A very fucking intense month that for regular, normal people time, is like six months!”
“Normal people time? Bloody hell woman you aren’t even making sense!”
“You need to turn yourself in!”
My head goes back as though she slapped me.
“What the fuck are you talking about? We’ve been through this.”
“No, no we haven’t, Mighty Mad Max has been through it, and he just expects me to agree. He expects everyone to agree. But you see here’s the thing! I don’t agree. You need to turn yourself in! We need to start living and not hiding, because eventually they will find you, Max. They will find you, and when they do it will be bad. Like epic proportions, bad.”
“Tess, I told you. If I turn myself in, even if by some miracle I make it alive. That would be the end of us. The end of anything we could have.”
“We can’t have anything now! Turn yourself in, Max. You have to; there’s no other choice.”
“What do you think will happen to us, Tess? If I turn myself in?”
“I’ll visit you! I’d still be here, Max. I wouldn’t go anywhere. We could get married, they have conjugal visits and things. We’ll make do, just like everyone else, Max. We’ll make do until I can get you out of there.”
“You don’t even know if you could get me out of there. No woman of mine is coming to a jail and visit me through a glass window every week and have guards patting her down. That shit is not happening. Have you even thought this through, woman? You want to work in law in this fantasy you’re creating. What law firm would even let you work for them, knowing you were married to a felon serving time for murder? And shit, conjugal visits; do you know what shit is? That shit is a joke, and I doubt they’d even let a murderer have them. You’re living in a fucking dream world!”