Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“Alright, alright,” I said. “It’s not that funny. And now you owe me an embarrassing high school sex story. Let’s hear it.”
“I can’t. I didn’t have sex in high school.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“Nope. I was a senior in college the first time.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t meet the right person until then.”
“When did you start going out with the douchebag?”
“Noah?”
I nodded.
Josie bit her bottom lip, suddenly shy. “My senior year in college. But Noah wasn’t my first. Though he was my second.”
Damn. I had no idea how we’d gone from a duck ate my dinner to talking about blow jobs and Josie’s lack of sexual partners. But this was definitely more interesting.
“So only two men…ever?”
She chugged the rest of her wine and stood. “I think I need more alcohol for this conversation. Do you want another glass?”
I put my hand over the rim. While she might need some liquid courage, I preferred to be sober for this. I wanted to remember it all. “I’m good.”
Josie filled her glass with a heavy hand and sat back down with a sigh. “Yes, only two men. I wanted my first time to be with a boyfriend, so it would mean something. But after my dad died, I didn’t let anyone get close to me. By the time I was twenty-one and a senior in college, I just wanted to get it over with. So I had sex with a guy I’d gone out with a few times. The funny thing is, I’d been afraid of getting close to someone and losing them, yet I dumped the guy less than a week after we did the deed. I met Noah a few months later, and, well, you know how that ended.” She gulped her wine. “I guess that’s my embarrassing story.”
“Nothing embarrassing about not being promiscuous.”
She shrugged. “I sometimes wonder if I’ve missed out. Then again, I’m a chronic overthinker, so I wonder about a lot of useless things.”
“Didn’t look like you were doing too much thinking while you were sitting in that kiddie pool today.”
“I wasn’t.” She smiled. “It’s easy to relax down here. I feel so different than I do in New York.”
“That city is stuffed with too many damn people. I don’t know how you live like that.”
“It’s funny. There are millions of people crammed into a twenty-two-square-mile strip of land. Yet I was lonely in a crowded room in Manhattan. Down here, I’m not lonely alone.”
“Sounds like Laurel Lake is doing you good.”
“I think so.”
We finished our shared dinner, and Josie polished off another glass of wine. Her cheeks were pink and she giggled more than usual, so I thought she might be tipsy. I cleared the table and rinsed the dishes, and she stood next to me, loading them into the dishwasher. When we were done, she looked over like she wanted to say something.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Seems like something’s on your mind…”
She pushed off the counter and came to stand in front of me, toe to toe. “What were you thinking about when you were watching me today?”
“I wasn’t watching you. I told you, I saw you in the yard because of an alarm notification.”
She leaned into me. “Liar.”
The best defense was always a good offense. “I think you’ve had too much to drink.”
“I know you watched me.”
“Maybe you’re a little full of yourself, doc.”
Josie pushed up on her toes and got in my face. I could smell the wine on her breath. Her eyes were bluer this close, and flecks of gold outlined her irises. My gaze stayed fixed until her lips started moving again.
“The camera moved and caught my attention. There was a blue light, Fox.”
“So?”
“My mother has the same security system. When someone activates the live camera, a little blue light turns on at the top.”
Oh fuck. “I hit the button by accident, so I watched for a minute. Figured I’d see what the hell you were doing chasing that duck.”
The gold in her eyes glittered. “The blue light was on for at least ten minutes.”
I stared down my nose at her, debating how to play this. I could deny it, pretend I had no idea what she was talking about, or I could own it—take my lumps and admit I was a dog. My eyes jumped back and forth between hers, and I leaned down as much as she’d stretched up. Our noses were practically touching. “Fine. I watched you.”
“And you watched me do yoga from the window too.”
“You weren’t exactly hiding it.”
Josie reached behind me to the counter and grabbed her wine. Knocking it back over a six-second count, she leaned even closer, and her tits pushed up against my chest.
“What were you doing while you were watching me today?”
My nostrils flared. She wanted me to tell her I was jerking off. And right now, I would have, if it had been true. I would’ve described fisting my cock while staring at her in that little white bikini. But I’d been in my truck, in a busy parking lot on a main road.