Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
“Sounds like a great idea.”
He takes a seat at a small wrought-iron table and looks up at me. “So talk.”
I sit down across from him and sigh. “There’s so much going on in my head that I feel like I’m going to explode.”
“What the hell happened?”
I scrub my face, regretting the decision when I put too much pressure on my finger. “This.” I hold up my finger. “I have three stitches.”
His eyebrows dip as he stares at me. “Okay…”
“I cut my finger with a knife. A knife I was using to cut Hartford’s clothes off her body.”
Harrison’s eyes widen as his mouth drops open. “I’m sorry, what?”
I groan, dropping my head back and staring up at the bright blue sky. I take a deep breath, letting the fresh air fill my lungs, and look back at Harrison. “That came out wrong. Everything is going wrong.” I rest my arms on the table. “Hartford is writing an article about BDSM, and I volunteered to help her.”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “That makes a little more sense, but Pax, what the hell are you doing?”
“That’s the problem, Harrison. I have no idea what I’m doing.” I glance down at the wooden table for a second before lifting my eyes back to him. “She wants to write the best article she can. She wants to prove her worth and her talent. I want to help her do that, so I volunteered to help her experiment with BDSM and learn everything we can to make her article amazing.”
“I’m gonna need more here,” he says.
“We’ve done a few things, which have gone terribly wrong.” I hold up my finger as an example and we both chuckle. “But—”
“But you want to keep doing BDSM with her?” he guesses.
I shake my head. “No, well, yeah, but it’s more than that.” I blow out a breath. “I want her, Harrison. I want her badly.”
“No shit,” he says with a hearty laugh. “You’ve wanted her for a long time. You just never admitted it.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Look, we're friends, so I don't want to cross that line with her.”
He smiles and points at my finger. “I need the full story on that later.” I chuckle, agreeing, and then he continues, “You’ve been pushing down your feelings for her since high school. You’ve gotten so good at it that you convinced yourself you didn’t see her as anything but a friend. To the rest of us, it’s pretty obvious. I’m not surprised that exploring BDSM with her has made you see her differently. Made you realize what we all already know.”
“This isn’t helping. I don’t know what to do here. What do I do?” I run my uninjured hand through my hair, hoping for eye-opening advice.
“Pax, it’s not my place to tell you what to do. That is a decision you need to make for yourself. The only advice I can give you is to follow your heart. You know failure is something I fear most, but I’ve realized since meeting February that regret is just as scary. I don’t want to look back and regret not taking the risk because of the fear of what the outcome may be. I want to look back and know that I followed my heart.” He grins. “I made sure she knew how I felt.”
He definitely did. I witnessed the start of their relationship and he couldn’t resist his feelings. It’s different for me though.
“It’s not the same thing. Hartford and I have been friends forever, Harrison. These feelings I’m having…I know it’s wrong. Our friendship is the most important thing. I’ll never cross that line, at least I don’t want to cross the line,” I admit.
If I lost her, I truly wouldn’t survive it. She’s the one who knows my secrets. The one I run to when I need someone. We have our inside jokes, our dinners, and our movie nights. We get drunk together and dance together. When I’m away, I miss her, and when I come back, I’m not home until I’m with her.
If I lost that, any of that, I’d lose myself.
I glance at Harrison and sigh. “I can’t lose her. If I told her how I feel and she leaves, that is something I’d regret forever.”
He frowns. “Well, shove it down, Pax. Bury your feelings like you always have. Just make sure it’s something you won’t regret.”
“She doesn’t want me, Harrison.”
“Are you sure about that?”
I shake my head, feeling my heart squeeze in my chest. “Yeah, man, I am.”
“So, maybe stop helping with BDSM,” he suggests.
“I got an invitation to Club Greed. Maybe it makes more sense for us to watch instead of doing,” I tell him.
He leans back a bit, shock clear on his face. “You got an invite to Club Greed? Take Hartford and see what happens.”