Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 65346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 327(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 218(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 327(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 218(@300wpm)
“Thanks, Benj.” His smile almost knocked me off my feet. “That means a lot. Sometimes, all I hear is the negative stuff, even if it’s just me saying them and not my lovely stepmother saying them.”
“Don’t listen to her. Or anyone else who has shit to say. It’s just them pushing their own crap on you, and you don’t have to take it.”
“Damn, look at you, a sports star and a star therapist.”
“You got a two-for-one deal, tonight.”
“Not bad.”
Was he moving closer to—yup, he was moving closer to me. Like really close. Like I could feel his breath on me close.
“Can I?” he asked. And I knew what he wanted. I wanted it, too.
I nodded, and that was all it took. He leaned in, and he kissed me, and it felt like my first ever kiss all over again. A rush of emotions almost carried me away into the tide. His lips felt so good against mine, his hand falling onto mine on the rail. Somewhere in the distance, a monkey howled as if cheering us on.
We broke apart when we heard the crunch of rocks from around the bend in the trail, along with the voices of the rest of the family. They turned the corner in the next moment, Dusty spotting me first, waving.
Again, it being dark helped hide how red my cheeks felt and how wet I was sure my lips looked. No one asked why the two of us were hanging out awkwardly on the steps up to the house, and no one asked why I stayed mostly silent for the rest of the night. Rex had gone straight to bed, which left me mostly wondering if that was the only thing “straight” about Rex after all.
6
Rex Madison
The clatter of dishes and the smell of soap was nice. It helped keep me from obsessively checking my phone every other five minutes, wondering if and when and how the video would leak. Would it be through a free porn website, or would someone have set up some paywall so they could profit off my stolen moment of intimacy— No. Focus on the tower of dishes that needed washing, not on the guillotine hanging over my head by a single little thread.
“You really don’t have to do this,” Mia said at my side, her auburn hair tied up in a messy bun.
“Trust me, I do.” I handed down another washed plate. Mia passed it to Benji, who had a drying station set up down the counter. “You’ve all been so kind in letting me stay here. It’s the least I can do.”
I’d been at the Gold Sanctuary for about two weeks now, and I felt eternally grateful to Mia and Ashley for letting me stay. I had made some fucked-up turns in life, but Mia, Ashley, and the rest of the Golds had always been there to right those turns since I was a sixteen-year-old kid.
Now, at twenty-six, as a law school dropout with a nearly zero balance bank account and a rising mountain of credit card debt made worse by the abandonment of my own father, I had found myself really turned around. So turned around I might as well have been staring at my own fucking ass.
“You’re always welcome here, Rex.” Mia gave me a warm rub between the shoulders before going back to drying the cups.
In through the doggy door bolted Penelope, the golden retriever, with Tammy bouncing close behind her, nipping playfully at the golden’s tail. When Tammy realized I was in the room, she came straight to me, cheerily chirping and standing up on her hind legs, the entire length of her long body reaching up to my thigh.
“It’s incredible to me how well she remembers you,” Mia said, watching as I gave my favorite otter some head scratches. Benji watched, too, a thin smile on his lips.
This sucked. Not the otter pets, but the awkward energy that simmered between the two of us. I hated it as much as I hated the situation I found myself in. Benji had too nice of a smile to keep hidden.
“I remember when you guys had just gotten her. She could fit in the palm of my hand.”
“Yup,” Mia said. “And you’d always come over to bottle-feed her. I think Mav started getting jealous at one point.”
“He did once say I hung out with Tammy more than him.”
Benji cleared his throat. “All right, I’m headed to bed.”
Mia shot a glance at the clock hanging on the wall. “It’s only eight. Are you feeling sick?”
“No,” Benji said, shrugging. He didn’t offer anything else. He placed the last of the dishes he had been drying into the cabinet and headed out of the kitchen, leaving a trail of questions in his wake.
I asked the first one I could pull from the murk. “Is he okay?”