Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 136029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
I shake my head.
Hot from embarrassment, and my eyes burn with incessant tears. I’m grasping onto his thigh with one palm, and I’ve yet to pry my other hand off my wet, splotchy face. Not until I force myself to wipe my running nose with my fist.
Farrow sees my struggle. He starts pulling off his black shirt. That action takes me back. So far back. To when he threw his shirt off a yacht for me, so I could staunch a nosebleed.
“No, don’t do that,” I cry, unable to fight the emotion that cascades down my jaw and soaks us both. And what he’s doing is just puncturing another dam, more tears.
I’m never going to stop crying.
There is no pent-up emotion to scream out. Everything flows from me like a rushing waterfall, and I can’t end it.
His strong hand encases my cheek, my jaw. “Just let go, okay?” His eyes are welled up. “You don’t need to be titanium.”
I feel like all I’m doing is letting go, but I understand what Farrow means in the next beat. I’m fighting his embrace, to let him hold me.
Scared that if I do, I’ll keep unraveling and bawling, and maybe that’s the point. Unravel. Cry like I’ve never cried before, because somewhere deep I wanted to and needed to—and he’s right there.
Right there.
I bury my face in the crook of his neck. Farrow pulls me against his body and holds me while I hold onto him, like I’m the wobbling buoy and he’s on a ship anchoring me.
I cry and cry. “Fuck,” I sob, drenching his shirt with snot and tears. “I don’t know why I’m…it just came out and…”
He strokes my head, my back. “You’re okay.” He sounds choked.
I lean back and see the tear tracks slipping down his jaw. He’s feeling what I’m feeling. We look into each other, and the intimacy of this moment settles in my body. Feather-light.
Deep breaths.
Silent tears stream.
His lip rises in this soft, loving smile, and he whispers, “Was it the movie or something else?”
I think for a second. “The movie.” I blink, my eyes wet and raw, and I pinch them. “And I don’t know why…” My chin quakes. Fuck.
Farrow shrugs, wiping at his own eyes. “It’s art. Art has the power to move people in different ways.” He lifts his brows. “You were moved, wolf scout.”
My face feels beet-red, and tears continue to leak out of the corners. But our eyes stay fastened.
He fists his shirt, about to pull the fabric off again, but he stops.
This time, I tug the tee off over his head. Leaving us both bare-chested. When I try to hand him the shirt, he pushes it back into my hands.
“Keep it.”
I wipe my nose with the black fabric.
He sweeps my features, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Is there a reason why you didn’t want me to give you that before?”
I heat up again. “I was thinking about when you threw me the shirt off the yacht.” I’ve brought up this day in our history before, but I ask, “Do you remember that?”
His lip starts to rise, a know-it-all smile. “I remember everything. Definitely more than you.”
I let out an irritated breath, and I realize he paused the film. And my icepack fell to the floor. My eyes meet his. “Then you must remember how I returned the shirt to you.”
Farrow blinks, rifling through his mind for that moment. “At the…Movie on the Green, for Kinney’s 10th birthday. I was there as your mom’s bodyguard.”
I nod strongly. “Yeah.”
He smiles. “I was surprised you didn’t just hold onto the shirt, tear it up in little pieces and paste it in your diary next to all the hearts around my name.”
“I wish I had,” I say seriously, even though he was joking.
That proclamation heavies the air. He searches me for clarification.
I keep going. “I was so damn stubborn. I still am, I know that—but God, I wish I’d just held onto something of yours that meant something to me. Instead, I let it go out of…morality. Because it was wrong to have your clothing in my possession.”
Farrow reaches down and clasps my calf. He brings my foot up to the sofa. “Is that what this is about?” His fingers skim the leather holster attached to my shin, and he slips out the tactical knife that he gifted me in Greece.
I just nod at first, the words piling on too quickly in my brain. It takes me a minute to release them in order. “I hate that I lost things in the fire that remind me of you. I know it’s material possessions. I know it shouldn’t fucking matter in the long-run, but I spent my whole life just moving forward and moving forward, and for once, I want to preserve the good things from the past.”