Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
But fucking finally, the day had come.
The flight from Denver to LA was only a couple of hours. Patrick would be picking me up at the airport. I’d told him I could take car service, but he cutely wasn’t having it. I was pretty sure there was a closet sweetheart under his rough exterior, and damn, did I like to be the one to uncover it.
I didn’t check a bag or anything, so with my carry-on in tow, I made my way outside of baggage claim at LAX, where he was picking me up. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this was happening at all while trying to figure out how in the fuck I felt about it when he pulled up at the curb in his Audi.
I tossed the bag in the back before climbing into the front seat. “Hey, baby. You miss me?” I teased, which immediately made him roll his eyes.
“You’re an idiot.”
“You like it,” I countered because I knew he did. And I liked that he liked it. “You know there’s a possibility that paps might see us?”
He shrugged but didn’t respond right away. Granted, the last thing they would suspect is the fact that he was picking me up and taking me home so I could get in his ass, but I still wanted to protect this, that we even spent time together.
“This is LA. Sometimes it’s easier to hide in plain sight.”
Was that what Patrick did in a lot of ways? Hide his pain or his hurt? Hide the fact that he felt so much and his parents fucking sucked and how goddamned lonely I knew he was? Because before we’d gotten close, before I’d let myself really see him, I would have never believed those things were there, so yeah, I understood what he was saying. Sometimes hiding in plain sight kept you camouflaged more than anything else.
“Hey,” I said, reaching over and putting a hand on his thigh while he drove. He glanced my way, trepidation in his stare. “Want some road head?” I teased, knowing he had expected something a little deeper.
Patrick laughed, not smooth and cultured the way he did when it wasn’t honest, but like the joy couldn’t be contained or couldn’t be bothered with pretending it wasn’t real.
“That might get some attention, asshole.”
“I can’t wait to be in your asshole.” I pumped my brows, knowing that was a terrible comeback but not caring since it made him smile.
“How the fuck do you get women with lines like that?”
“Men, too, and I don’t know. I got you, didn’t I? You tell me.”
“I just want to see what it’s like to be with a man. Let’s not pretend you’re something special.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Depends on what you’re offering.” I winked, earning myself another bit-back grin.
“Jesus, why the fuck is it you?”
This time, it was my turn to laugh. “Like I’m not thinking the same shit about you. Would be easier if you weren’t so fucking hot.”
He didn’t look my way, but I could have sworn his cheeks tinged a slight pink. Would you look at that. Patrick Whitt was blushing. “That why you pretended to hate me your whole life?”
“Oh no. I did hate you…but I also didn’t know you,” I admitted. “You made it easy to hate you because you were always putting on a show.” And he still did in some ways. Maybe Patrick thought he wanted people to hate him. I’d prove to him it didn’t have to be that way.
LA traffic was a bitch like always, but we distracted ourselves the whole drive by talking about shit that didn’t matter.
I’d been right before when I’d imagined that Patrick’s house was in the Hollywood Hills.
This sure as shit wasn’t somewhere I ever thought I would be. “You hungry?” he asked again, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was nervous. You couldn’t tell it by looking at him, but then, he was good at keeping secrets.
“Yeah, I could eat. What do you got?”
We ended up grilling some chicken in his backyard, with his pool out in front of us, sipping on a cold beer while the food cooked.
“You guys have always been close? You and your family?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. My bio dad was a real piece of work. He didn’t give a damn about us. He treated my mom like shit and bailed on her. Never saw us, never paid a cent of child support or anything. It was real hard on my mom. She had me and Kayla when he bounced the fuck out. Eventually, she met Steven. He was fucking great. He came into a ready-built family, but he never treated me or Kayla like we were anything but his kids, even after Zuri and Savanna came along. There wasn’t a difference in how he parented his biological daughters compared to us. We never had money, ya know, but it was the first time in Mom’s life she didn’t have to kill herself to make ends meet. He’s my pops if you ask me. Fucking broke us all when he died.”