Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
“What’s your point?” I say coldly.
“I don’t know.”
“You do,” I say. “You just don’t want to offend me. Trust me, it’ll take more than this. Tell me, Lily.”
“What if you get a big case at work or something? What if you can’t stay on this? What if you lose interest?”
“I won’t be able to lose interest in this,” I growl, realizing we’re pulling up outside her work far too soon as if the city has conspired to get us here as quickly as possible. Usually, the traffic is terrible, but not today. Maybe I’m feeling morbid, but the whole damn world’s a joke. “How could I? How could you even think of me losing interest? No man could look away from this sort of thing.”
“Hmm,” she murmurs.
“What’s hmm?” I ask.
She looks up at me bravely, her eyes full of sass. Or maybe my thinking of it as sass is undervaluing it. She looks fierce and ready. She looks like a woman who will put her case across and doesn’t care what anyone else says. I see her suddenly as a lawyer or the operator of an entire social work division. She’s going places.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she says brusquely.
“Like what?”
She bites her lip. Fuck. There’s nothing staged or rehearsed about it. There’s something so hot about how natural it is. “It doesn’t matter.”
It unquestionably does, but she doesn’t want to speak about it. “What were you going to say?” I ask.
She reaches for the door handle. “It doesn—”
“Yes, it does,” I growl. “It does matter.”
She flinches again. I need to calm the hell down. It’s like death is hovering over my shoulder. It’s making me so tense.
“You said you can’t lose interest. The thing is, stuff like this has been happening since you stopped helping, Landon. It’s not like it just stopped. You worked all those years as a divorce lawyer. There was still stuff going on. There were still little girls with psychos for dads and junkies for moms. They’re still waiting for their knight in shining armor.”
Am I the knight she’s talking about?
“It didn’t stop,” she goes on.
She angrily pushes the door handle. I watch her go, thinking about running after her and grabbing her arm. It’s the sort of impulsive thing a logical man would never do. A natural block in me forever prevents me from overstepping the line like that, but not anymore.
I’m out of the car suddenly, walking after her, taking long strides to catch up with her. She gasps when I take her elbow and turn her toward me. She stares with almost fascinated eyes. She looks curious, too, but something’s holding her back. Maybe the fact we’re standing outside her workplace.
“What are you doing?” she hisses.
“I’m not the jackass you think I am,” I tell her gruffly. “I’m not some selfish asshole.”
“I didn’t say you were,” she says. “Landon, please …” She gestures at her building.
“I just … need you to know that.”
I turn away, feeling lame and ineffective. I don’t even know what I was trying to do there. She’s right. There’s no way around it. I stopped helping because I stopped caring. Maybe I stopped believing a man like me could feel anything other than cold, hard facts. Perhaps it has something to do with my childhood. I don’t know, and I don’t care.
I know one thing. I’m not the same now, which has everything to do with Lily.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LILY
Ihurry into the building, his touch lingering on my arm like a warm phantom kiss. He was staring down at me like he was going to kiss me again. I swear, the silver in his hair was glistening, shining, as though drawing attention to our age gap. The crazy part is, I think it was hot, somehow, the glint of maturity.
Then I remembered Mom’s voice after she sobered up, and I genuinely began listening to her. “Your father knew what he was doing, Lily. An older man knew all the right buttons to push and how to twist me around his finger. It’s not an excuse for the mother I’ve been, but the truth is, I stood no chance against him.”
I need to be careful with Landon. I regret that knight in shining armor comment. It was so dorky. It revealed too much of myself. I shouldn’t care, but …
Carter is glaring at me as I walk across the office. His usually resigned expression is uncharacteristically pissed.
“Is something wrong?” I ask.
“Who was that you were just with?”
“Excuse me?” I reply coldly. “Somebody who gave me a ride.”
“Who is he to you? That’s what I’m asking.”
“You’re being weird, Carter,” I say, sitting at my desk.
Carter leans forward, leaning on his desk and staring at me. It’s more like he’s searching inside of me.
“Is there a problem?”
“I don’t know. Is there?”