Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
A house. Oh, a house. I felt like Goldilocks all of a sudden, the trespassing asshole.
But that was going to be me now: the trespassing asshole, and I didn’t care. I couldn’t. I was so happy.
Alex’s strides slowed as he approached it, and when we got to a deck around the back, he crouched to let me slide off. We’d nailed that shit down over the last few days. My legs hadn’t gotten any steadier, but by now, he didn’t even give me a side-look when I had to cling to his forearm so I wouldn’t fall on my face.
I wasn’t even a little surprised either when he slipped a hand around my elbow and helped me up the porch stairs. He’d done that a lot lately, leading me places. To the creek. To a comfy tree.
He hadn’t asked again how I was feeling, but I was pretty positive he knew I felt like absolute shit. I’d wanted to throw up every single moment I was on his back, but I’d sucked it up through sheer will. I would’ve been damned if I’d complained. He didn’t, and I wouldn’t either. I had one job, and that was to not make a shitty situation a shittier one.
When we were at the door, he put his hand on the knob and twisted his wrist slowly. Something popped, and a second later, the door opened. All righty, he’d broken the knob like it was nothing. I still hadn’t moved past him crushing an engine part and opening a can with his fingernail.
He went in first, flipping the light switch. Dark yellow lightbulbs instantly turned on overhead, giving us a good view of a small, single area cabin. There was a leather couch, a fireplace surrounded by dark brown bricks, a table with two chairs, and a kitchen that was more like a kitchenette. There were even two bunk beds built into the wall. It was all clean, and there wasn’t anything worse than some dust it looked like, but not even much of it.
I looked over at Alexander, who had already done his own inspection from the ease of his body.
He was fucking filthy, and if I had any fucks left, I would have been scared to see what I looked like. But despite having a layer of dirt and mud covering him, his eyes were bright and clear, and he looked better than he had any right to, considering what we’d been through.
You couldn’t have paid me to sniff my armpits or breath.
“I’m never going to take having a roof over my head for granted again,” I whispered for the first time since last night when I’d told him “thank you” for handing over the last half can of tuna we’d split evenly.
Even he sighed as he looked around the cabin again.
“Are we… staying here tonight?” I asked to be sure.
I’d learned how to speak Alex grunts, and I knew the one he’d let out was a “yes.”
I wanted to fucking hug him.
Because the truth was, I didn’t think I could handle getting on his back again any time soon. My groin had gone past sore and around the corner. My thighs and butt were bruised, but not as bad as I would have expected, and I highly doubted I could hold a fork right now.
I realized in that moment, somewhere in the back of my brain, that this stop was more than likely for me.
Or maybe not.
Toeing off my shoes, I rubbed my face with the backs of my hands and tried to decide what was the most important thing to do. And that was taking a shower. There had to be one here. There just had to.
I peeked at the man who had saved me, and figured now was just as good a time as any. Holding back a wince, I trudged toward one of the closed doors and found a small bathroom. I could have cried… if I wasn’t dehydrated again.
Purposely not looking at the tiny mirror over the sink, I went straight for the stall tucked into the corner. Turning the tap, I almost squealed when water shot out of the head, sputtering from how calcified it had to be, but who gave a shit? It worked! I was never taking running water for granted. Never, ever. From the smell, it had to be on a well, which then made me wonder about the electricity and how I hadn’t seen any solar panels, so we couldn’t be too far away from civilization. There was a bottle of shampoo and a single bar of dry soap on a rack hanging from the showerhead.
If I didn’t need to wash my hair so bad, I might have put off taking one a little longer. I’d been eyeballing the creek every time we stopped, thinking about washing my face at least, but I was already so cold, so wet.