Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28386 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 142(@200wpm)___ 114(@250wpm)___ 95(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28386 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 142(@200wpm)___ 114(@250wpm)___ 95(@300wpm)
Alarm bells begin to peal in the forefront of my mind and I can’t ignore them now. The plane has disoriented me, forced me to look around and realize nothing about my home looks the same. There’s a giant green tractor that makes no sense. It’s something from the future, but no future I could have imagined myself. There are lights attached to the house where none existed before.
There is a barn standing on the edge of the property that wasn’t there ten minutes ago.
Is that a truck? The exterior is so shiny. It looks like a fucking spaceship.
“Shiloh, where am I?” I say thickly. “What year is this?”
Her eyes lock with mine and something like disbelief flickers in hers. “It’s…twenty twenty-three.” In a whisper, she adds, “Obviously. Right?”
Dizziness bleeds into my head like spilled ink and now there are two of my dream girls, their faces swimming and circling in front of me. Surely this isn’t real.
“What year d-did you think it was?” she asks, almost as if she’s afraid to hear my answer.
I can barely choke the words out. “Nineteen forty-nine.”
Chapter
Three
Shiloh
My kitchen looks the same as it did when I left it.
Except for the giant, shirtless rancher from the past sitting at my dining room table with his head in his dirt-streaked hands. He’s looking around at everything—the appliances, the stack of glossy mailed advertisements, the laptop charging in the corner—with the wariness of someone who has been dropped into a snake pit.
“Maybe I’m having a nervous breakdown and you’re a figment of my imagination,” I murmur, dropping like a stone into the chair across from Blaste. “It has been a really long day and grief does strange things to people.”
Blaste lifts his head. “In case I didn’t say it before, I’m sorry about your grandmother,” he says, still dazed. We both are. Having a conversation about anything but the matter at hand, aka his arrival from the mid-twentieth century, seems absurd, but we’ve tacitly agreed to ease into the subject.
“Her name was Fran. She would have liked you,” I say. “I’m not sure how I know that—I just do. She liked big characters. Story makers, she called them.”
He studies me, humming in his throat. “I’m not a figment of your imagination, Shiloh. I’m real. And we can’t be having the same…hallucination.” He leans over to look at the date at the top of this morning’s newspaper and tension brackets his mouth. “I don’t know how I got here, only that I felt…pulled backwards through a keyhole.” Intense eyes find mine. “I needed to get to you. And that was the end of it.”
Heavy heat weighs low in my stomach.
I was going to let this man, this stranger take my virginity in the field.
For a fleeting handful of seconds, nothing had ever felt more right. I was meant to be touched and molded and kissed and frantic with him. I simply was. But now that we’re sitting in the artificial light of the kitchen, I order myself to keep a clear head. The impossible has happened. I’ve compelled a man through time. Now what am I going to do with him?
“Are you hungry?” I ask.
“Sugar, I’m always hungry.” He leans away from the table and flicks the front brim of his cowboy hat, leaving it sitting at an odd angle on his head. “I sure would love to watch you prepare me something to eat, woman.”
Just like that, I’m feeling pretty good about still having my virginity. “We need to talk about how things have changed since nineteen forty-nine, Blaste. Women aren’t just servants waiting for orders from a man. There are no more hot meals waiting on the table, because in most cases, a household needs two incomes to survive in this economy. Women can’t spend all day making a meal—we’re working, too.”
“You have a job?”
“Well, not yet. I just graduated high school.”
He whistles beneath his breath. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of time on your hands. The kind of time you could be using to make me a sandwich.” He pats his stomach, which is incredibly firm and sprinkled with dark hair. “I haven’t eaten since forty-nine. Have a heart.”
I stare at him blankly. “You can’t possibly be my person.”
That catches his attention and he sits up straighter. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” I mutter, pushing back from the table and heading for the fridge, taking out the cold cuts and mayo. A tomato. I bring it all to the cutting board, along with two slices of bread from the cabinet. His chair scrapes on the floor as he turns around to observe my betrayal of the women’s rights movement. I glance back over my shoulder and find his attention on my bottom. My back. He drags his bottom lip through his teeth and makes a deep sound in his throat. It should make me want to hit him over the head with the bag of bread, but instead, there’s a terribly wonderful churn in my belly, goosebumps popping up on the back of my neck. I’m making this man a sandwich while he objectifies me and that shouldn’t make me feel so…wet and pliant and shivery…everywhere.