Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 98485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Still, I reach for her, copping a feel. She giggles and checks the clock.
“Ugh. I have to go to Ted’s soon.” She rolls onto her stomach and checks her phone. “And I’m officially an aunt again. Cooper and Abby just had their baby. Another boy.”
“You going to go up and see him?”
“Eventually.” She sets the phone down and reaches for the nearest shirt. It’s my old Panthers hockey jersey, number nine, and it looks way better on her than it does on me. Especially when she has nothing else on at all.
“We have time,” I say as she shakes out her hair from the collar of the shirt. Holding her there, I reach my hand under the sheet and find my way between her taut thighs. She squirms but parts her legs, giving me access.
Her brow furrows. “Not all that much.”
“We have enough though. I can be fast. I know what you like …”
She studies me, a smile breaking out on her face that turns into a little giggle.
I roll over and set my phone down. “What?”
She gives me a playful smile and grabs for my phone. “What are you looking at? Are you sending Yours Cruelly messages to another girl?”
I chuckle as she stares at the phone, trying to figure out how to unlock it. “Yours Cruelly died a tragic and horrible death a lifetime ago.”
“Good riddance. He was an asshole.”
I’m glad we can laugh about this now.
I pull her onto me. She throws a leg over my hip and straddles me, kissing me, her hair falling in a veil around my face. I touch her little belly gently, which is somehow now sexier as it gets rounder by the day. If she didn’t already drive me wild, her pregnancy curves are going to be the death of me. When she pulls back, I saw the crease of worry in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I’m just thinking of next Sunday and my brothers beating you into a bloody pulp on the sidewalk outside my house.”
“You think I can’t handle your brothers?” I puff my chest out in an attempt to be funny. I’ve always had broad shoulders and an athletic build, but Cooper and Aidan are built like two brick shithouses.
She inhales sharply. “I love your confidence but …”
Honestly, I probably couldn’t, if we came to blows. But I’ve been working out what I want to say to them, and it’s sound.
I run my fingers down the lines of her shoulder blades. “I know.”
She straightens her spine, her nipples pointing up, making me want to suck on them again. I rub the pad of my thumb over a nipple and it pebbles at once.
“You know they’re going to wonder why you did a one-eighty, acting like I was the most annoying thing in the world to, uh, knocking me up.”
“You really think they remember that? It was a long time ago.”
She gives me a look. Then she rolls over in bed, onto her stomach, reaching for her own phone on the ground. She lifts it up, scrolls, and then recites, in very flowery language, as if it’s a Shakespeare soliloquy: Hey blondie, Roses are red, some diamonds are black, I think Laura Ingalls Wilder wants her clothes back. Yours Cruelly, X.
The words come back to me as she says them. I remember the outfit. A shirt with a high, ruffled collar, that I don’t even think my grandmother would wear. She made it look sexy. Now that I think about it, that might’ve been the first time I beat off, thinking about her.
“Okay, what about this one: Hey, blondie. Roses are red, sushi is vile, you look like you came from a donation pile. Yours Cruelly, X.”
Again, that look. This is where I’m supposed to explain.
“For the record, I like sushi,” I tell her, reaching for her phone. She holds it away from me, but I have longer arms and grab it, paging through one insult after the next. “What the hell? Did you keep all of these?”
She nods.
“Why?” I ask.
She looks down at her chest, flushing. “Because, well … everyone ignored me. Yours Cruelly was mean. But at least he knew I existed. Him and … well, the other you.”
It’s a dagger in my heart, right there. I didn’t know. How did I not know? She acted like she was above everyone. Like she didn’t want to be down on Earth with us losers. I was trying to bring her down a peg. How could I not realize she just wanted someone to be nice to her?
In a cruel twist of fate, that someone ended up being Jonathan.
He might have been a prick, but he at least he paid attention to her—that was all she wanted.
I touch her thigh. “Jesus. Stassi. I’m sorry.”
She gives me a small smile. “It’s all right. It helps to laugh about it now.”