Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72542 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72542 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
“Funny. I just grabbed the first thing in my closet.”
He smiled, albeit a little sadly. “Well, there’s no crime against wearing a winning shirt. Come on. Let’s find our seats.”
We turned to walk in the Lit class, but I stopped when I felt eyes on me and turned back. There was Bianca. Watching us. She swept her gaze over Bart, curled her lip, and shot me a go to hell glare. I could feel the disdain dripping from her as she raked her eyes over me, sniffed, and turned her back.
She was trouble. Big time.
Ugh.
After classes, I drove to the local Wal-Mart and picked up a few things that Mimi needed for her pantry. She didn’t have a license, so if she had any errands I typically ran them for her. I drove to her apartment, unpacked her groceries, and made sure she was set for the week. I left her out by the pool flirting with Mr. Sully and some of her friends. She’d told all the residents I was dating Max Kent, and since most of them knew who he was, they’d grilled me about what it was like to date a famous football star. I’d lied to all of them, and it was getting easier.
I arrived home around five in the afternoon, and my eyes went straight to Max’s place. It looked empty. They’d never put blinds up on the big front bay window, and I could see straight to the television—which was off. I sighed. He had long days at practice, and it wasn’t hard to see that football was everything to him.
I found myself wanting to tell him about seeing Bart. About how my heart didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would the night he’d driven me home.
Maybe it was better if I didn’t confide in him, though.
I settled down at my small desk in the den, opened my computer and scrolled, finding the article I’d bookmarked a long time ago. It was an online piece from the Asheville Gazette about a girl who’d wrecked her car on the bridge overlooking Casey Lake right outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Posted three years ago, it described how a passing motorist had phoned in the accident. It didn’t give the motorist’s name or any identifying information. The paramedics and police had responded, but it wasn’t until the next day they’d got the equipment out to drag the lake. Once they found evidence of the car, divers had gone in to search for survivors. The article concluded with the statement that the search was on-going and the person driving was considered missing. There was no report of a young man on the shore, no report of someone pulling a girl from the water.
I closed out the tab and clicked my laptop shut.
I’d been absolutely terrified that night, but I ran through the woods until I came to a nearly deserted truck stop on the highway, where I begged some young college kids to give me a ride to Knoxville. They had. Once there, I’d bought a bus ticket to Atlanta with the cash I still had in the back pocket of my denim shorts.
The rest is history. Here I was, living and breathing and not doing bad. If I’d stayed on that mountain—I stopped.
Don’t, Sunny.
Then Max’s face popped in my head.
But he wasn’t good to think about either.
I exhaled and went to the kitchen to make sugar cookies. That’s just what I needed—something sweet to forget all the bad.
Max
TONIGHT WAS OUR LET’S GET to know each other better date. I’d been to her house a couple of evenings to study and we’d touched on personal things, but now I wanted to dig into her, get under her skin. There were resistant layers I’d yet to peel away. She’d told me about being from North Carolina and growing up as a preacher’s kid in a strict household. I knew her father was sick with cancer and their relationship was strained. Her mom had died years ago in a car accident with a man she’d been having an affair with.
I’d been thinking a lot about Sunny lately. Her lips, those long legs, and the way she looked at me when she didn’t think I noticed.
I had a proposition for her—one that had been clawing at me since the moment she’d stood on my front porch. I wanted her in my bed.
“What’s your favorite color?” I asked, gazing at her from across the table inside the Orion Coffee Shoppe—the place we’d supposedly met. A hipster place near campus, it held poetry readings and band night for amateurs. I liked it immediately, mostly because it was low-key and no one paid me any attention.
She sent me a side-eye over a bite of her club sandwich. “Blue. Who cares?”
“I do. I want to know everything about you.”