Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
I’d put a lot of work into it over the years. From the rustic floors and the wall of brick tiles I’d installed to warm up the space that had felt very cold and industrial before, to the decor. The tufted brown leather bed, the shelves under the window that mostly housed cookbooks I’d collected over the years, and some pictures of my family back in the day.
My gaze landed on an image of me and my brother, young teens still, smiling for a picture my grandmother had taken of us outside in the driveway playing basketball.
I moved toward it, picking it up.
“What the fuck happened to you?” I wondered aloud as I looked at my brother’s face. He’d been a happy kid. Despite the hard times, he was always light and smiling. Nothing like that man with the ice-cold eyes I saw at the gym.
With a sigh, I put the picture back down, but flipped it facedown this time.
I turned on the TV to distract myself, but couldn’t even focus on the game playing as I found myself pacing, trying to sit, then getting up to pace again.
Shower, rinse, repeat, for fucking hours.
Before I just forced myself to lower the light and get into bed, figuring I would pass out eventually.
It was right then that I heard a soft knock at the door.
I knew it was her before I even threw off the covers. The guys would have just charged in, knowing I never had women in my room. And the girls never came to my door.
I flicked on the light before pulling the door open, finding Everleigh standing there with a sleep mask pushed up on her forehead, and her pink blanket wrapped around her, her whole body trembling.
“Do you have another blanket?” she asked, jiggling to keep herself warm. “My room is so cold,” she added, leaning in toward mine. “It’s so much warmer in here,” she said, leaning into my room.
“Come in,” I said, ushering her inside. “Let me see what’s going on with your room,” I said, moving past her.
It was always an empty room, door closed, so we clearly hadn’t ever known before that something was clearly wrong with the vents.
She was right.
It was fucking frigid in there. Even though I knew Slash had started turning the heat on at night because the girls were complaining about the cold.
“The fuck?” I said, feeling a shiver course through me too as I moved toward one of the vents, way up high in the ceiling, and felt nothing coming out of it.
With a sigh, I moved back to my room to talk to her, only to find her in my bed, the covers pulled up to her nose.
“I’m sorry. I know I’m being rude. Your bed is so warm,” she told me.
“It’s fine, sweetheart. Something is wrong with the heat in your room,” I told her. “You can’t sleep in there until we fix it.” Not if she got that cold that easily.
“Can I stay here?” she asked. “I promise I don’t move around a lot in my sleep,” she added, surprising the shit out of me.
I knew what I was supposed to do.
Tell her to take my room.
To grab my pillow and go sleep on the couch.
That was what a good man would do.
I was suddenly not feeling that good, though.
“Of course,” I said, nodding. “I’ll grab your cow thing,” I added, moving back out to get it, taking a few slow, deep breaths, trying to remind my body that it was never going to fucking happen with her, so it could just stop having a reaction to her nearness.
There was no reasoning with attraction, though.
So self-control was just going to need to win out.
When I walked back in, she was in the same position, but she’d thrown her blanket over the top of all the others.
Looking right at home.
And, fuck, did a part of me really like that.
“Feel better?” I asked, handing her the sea cow, then moving around to get in the bed from the other side.
It was a king-sized bed.
But I was a big guy.
So she was close enough for me to feel her body heat and smell that caramel/vanilla scent of hers. I bet my bedding was going to linger with that smell for days.
“So much,” she said, nodding as I reached for the remote, and handed it to her.
“No, it’s okay. Watch your game,” she insisted.
“I wasn’t watching it anyway,” I assured her.
She didn’t try to insist again, taking the remote, and flicking around until she found what she was looking for.
That damn movie channel that did Christmas movies all November and December.
Apparently, they also did fall romance movies.
And we were going to be watching one.
Honestly, it fit right in with my idea of what kind of content she would consume. Nothing about her implied she’d be the kind to love true crime or action. She was all things soft and girly. So was her music. And so, of course, were her movie preferences.