Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“You’ll miss me too much, huh?” I teased. “You know we were just fucking around.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was as though someone had taken me over and was taking care of shit I suddenly didn’t have the balls to take care of.
“You’re good at that…at pretending nothing matters to you. At turning everything into a joke…at playing it off as if it doesn’t matter, or by building yourself up to mask all the other shit but that’s what it is, Ethan, isn’t it? A mask.”
My body began to tremble from the inside out. It was as though it was cracking apart, as though I would crumble at any fucking second but I didn’t do that. I didn’t fucking crumble. I never had. “Fuck that. I am who I am. I don’t hide from shit.”
“Everyone hides from something, Straighty. We’re all lying to ourselves if we think we don’t. And…I get it. I know how losing your parents had hurt you. I know it was made a hundred times worse by the way your grandmother treated you.”
I shook my head, trying to block him out.
“Today was a lot. I get it. The sex last night and then you ended up at a family barbecue where my parents go a little insane on you…and I know that had to stir up feelings with you about your own family. I get it. I guess…” He shrugged. “I guess I just want you to know I see you. I see you and I like what I see. You don’t have to hide from me.”
Fuck if there wasn’t a part of me that wanted to reach out for him. That wanted to bury my face in his neck and breathe him in and tell him how much today meant to me. If there wasn’t a part of me that wanted to do it again, or ask him if he thought my parents would have loved me the way his loved him. If there wasn’t a part of me that wanted to ask him what it was he saw when he looked at me, because I didn’t think anyone had ever seen me before. Sometimes, I didn’t know if I fully saw myself.
I saw the man people wanted to sleep with. The man who was good at what I did and who only let myself love architecture because it could never hurt me. The man who used sex and jokes and confidence to hide the fact that I didn’t really know exactly who I was or what I wanted…that I didn’t know how to find out, either.
But I couldn’t say those things. Couldn’t believe them because they meant the man I’d made myself into—the one who hardened himself after his parents died and who made something of himself to prove to the woman who raised him that he was worthy of something—was a lie.
“You see me, huh?” I cocked a brow at him. “Obviously, you like what you see.”
Sean rolled his eyes and damned if I couldn’t blame him.
“I didn’t realize how much you hide until now. You play the cocky guy well.”
Who the fuck did he think he was, saying this shit to me? “Yeah. Okay. And you like whatever game I’ve been playing.” I leaned closer to him. “You like me cocky.”
He smelled too fucking good, but that wasn’t what caught me. It was the look in his eyes. I recognized it. Saw the disappointment there. I got Sean somehow…and he got me. It didn’t make any sense. Not really, but we did. There was a connection with us from the start. It didn’t matter if we were talking or laughing or fucking, it was there.
“I think it’s time for me to go,” I said. I tried to walk by but Sean grabbed my arm. I fought to pull away from him and he didn’t let me. The disappointment in his stare changed then, and it became a challenge. He was challenging me and I knew why.…Because it would get me to stay.…Because he knew I couldn’t walk away from it, and he was right.
I wasn’t sure exactly how it happened. One minute we were standing there, Sean’s fingers pressing into my arm as he held me in place and the next we were wrestling. I struggled to get out of his hold, but he was too fucking good for me to do it. Before I realized it, we were on the floor and he was straddling me.
“Cheating fucking bastard,” I gritted at him before I pushed, using my body to get the upper hand and roll so I was on top of him. I held his wrists and pressed my weight into him. “Look who’s on top now.”
He grinned, fucking grinned this mischievous smile that said not for long. He twisted, somehow fucking lifted me, and then tossed me to my back without hurting me. His body was on top of mine and my wrists were held under his legs. “Stop fighting. You can’t win,” he said as I thrashed beneath him and tried to break free.