Total pages in book: 238
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
She wouldn’t relent, and it was over, no matter how much she wanted all of this.
I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth together and wishing I hadn’t busted that bottle now.
I wouldn’t chase her again. She wasn’t one of us. She would never fight for me.
I swallowed the lump and drew in a long breath, exhaling the pain in my gut.
Damon stood up and pulled up his jeans. “I’ll be in the showers,” he sighed. “Again.”
Emory
Present
We’d never slept in the same bed.
Of course, it wasn’t like we ever had a relationship. Just unbridled, stolen moments.
I looked over at him next to me, his head turned away as his bare chest rose and fell, and the morning light seeped through the drapes, making his skin glow and his eyebrows look like chocolate.
He brought me up here last night and told me to go to sleep, and I thought about arguing, but then I realized I didn’t want to.
I was tired. He was tired. Fuck it.
My arm laid next to his, my pinky brushing his, and I almost wanted to thread them, but if I moved, so would he, and I wasn’t ready for him to wake up.
Turning my head left, I gazed at Alex curled up on her side, facing me and holding the pillow under her head.
She wore one of Will’s T-shirts, and while seeing them together last night and how close they were hurt, I liked Alex. I liked her a lot.
She didn’t want to hurt me. I knew that.
I couldn’t help but smile a little. Her nose curled up at the end, almost like a Who, and I could see straight up her nostrils.
Not a single hair out of place on her entire body. Not a single one.
I shook my head and stared back up at the ceiling, trying to wonder if I should be weirded out that I was planted in bed between my first love and his girlfriend, but somehow it seemed like such a shallow thought in the grand scheme of things.
I rolled over, pushed myself up slowly, and climbed over Alex, gazing down at them both still asleep. Walking behind the privacy screen, I grabbed a washcloth, wetting it under the faucet of the tub.
Squeezing out the excess hot water, I pressed it to my face, closing my eyes and letting the warmth seep through and calm the ache in my jaw and on my eye where Alex had smacked me yesterday.
A bath sounded good, but I didn’t want to wake them up yet.
But just then, something brushed my leg, and I dropped my arms, opening up my eyes to see Alex sitting on the edge of the tub, peering up at me.
“Sorry I woke you,” I told her, reheating the washcloth under the hot water again.
“I’m fine.”
I wrung out the cloth and stepped up to her, pressing it to her cheek and the nasty bruise swelling under the skin.
She tried to take it, but I nudged her away. “I wasn’t going to leave without you,” I told her.
In case she doubted that.
I just hated myself, and it was easier to try to disappear than face the music yesterday.
“And him?” she asked. “Were you going to leave without him?”
I inched forward, my legs on both sides of her thigh as I gently patted her face.
“The best thing for him is to be as far away from me as possible,” I said.
But instead of trying to convince me otherwise, she just scoffed. “You’re such a coward.”
I tensed a little, but I kept my mouth shut, moving the hot towel around her face.
I wasn’t a coward about everything.
“Emmy, I gotta bring him home,” she told me. “Help me. I know you loved him. How can anyone not love him?”
A small laugh escaped through the lump lodged in my throat. True. I was glad to hear I wasn’t the only one susceptible to his power.
Everyone adored that boy.
“That man last night—that temper—that’s not who he is,” she whispered. “You know that.”
Do I? He’d been through the shit. She might’ve spent more time with him in recent years, but she hadn’t know him in high school. That Godzilla conversation yesterday was the first glimpse of the old Will I’d gotten since I got here.
“You know how to fight,” she said, sounding surprised.
I wasn’t sure if she was talking about our scuffle in the foyer yesterday or if she saw my match with Taylor the other day.
But I shook my head. “I just know how to get back up.”
“That’s half the battle.”
She studied me as I wiped her face.
“Kai owns a dojo in Meridian City,” she told me. “Did you know that? It’s where our family trains.”
I looked into her eyes, something unsaid passing between us, but I swore it sounded like an offer.
But she was deaf, dumb, and blind if she thought I was welcome there. I had a job to get back to anyway.