Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Not caught lying. Literally caught.
That whole conversation . . . Grayson had seemed so serious.
Carl shook his head.
No wonder. He wanted to know Carl had someone to talk to, someone who would help him if . . . Grayson had looked at him more intensely since the bike-stealing incident. To Grayson, that wasn’t the first time they’d met. He would’ve been wondering if and when that night would be acknowledged. To him, Carl was a bit of trouble indeed.
“You’re the guy with the big heart.”
Grayson frowned. “You didn’t recognise me?”
“You had this scarf over half your face! It was dark. I was drunk.”
Grayson took the scarf, expression crunched as he tried to understand something.
“This is a huge misunderstanding,” Carl said. “That night, I never intended to . . . I was opening up my arms for a new start, I . . . I’m sorry I made you worry. And, of course, I thank you for offering your help.”
Grayson looked up from the scarf. “If you didn’t recognise me from the cliff . . . what conversation did we have this morning?”
Well, now.
Did that mean Grayson hadn’t clued on yet?
If not, perhaps best he didn’t? Carl flattened the collar of Grayson’s shirt. “You know, flannel looks good on you. You should keep it.”
“Jason,” Grayson said in a warning tone.
Carl gulped and darted his gaze to the buildings across the street, the lights popping on up the hill . . . Grayson kept staring, slightly judgy eyes seriously judgy now. Carl couldn’t take it. Besides, even if Grayson didn’t know about this double identity thing he was dabbling in right now, he surely wasn’t far off figuring it out.
Carl leapt to his feet, jacket pooling to the bench, and bolted at a run up the hill after blurting, “I’m not Jason Lyall.”
No one can love who has not a heart.
L. Frank Baum
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Chapter Six
Carl didn’t sleep much and when he did, he was plagued by dreams of Grayson in grey, staring at him with intense dark eyes. Carl kept running from him, but every corner he turned, wham, he toppled into the man again. Good thing the guy was attractive or it would’ve been frightening for sure. As it was, smacking into him was wildly pleasant for a few moments before that gaze once more sent him fleeing.
He woke screaming for Scorpio to stop stirring stuff up! And wagged an extra warning at his tented bedsheet. “This guy is something else.”
He made Carl feel like he was on a boat. In choppy seas. Which was fair. Carl had mostly admitted the truth before he bolted last night, and he didn’t know what to expect from Grayson going forward. That in itself was enough to make his stomach churn.
But there was something else . . . exhilarating and terrifying. Throwing him off balance. Overboard!
Grayson was his cliff-top hero. The guy with the big heart.
There was more to Grayson than vanity and a tinny façade. He was kind. Constantly helping others. How earnestly he had talked with Carl yesterday . . .
And that penetrating gaze. Carl had thought it judgy, but . . . Grayson searched for the real in people. No wonder he needed to keep looking at him.
“Enough. Think of other things.”
Like how he’d tune Linda’s piano.
He groaned, rolled out of bed, and decided it was early enough. He’d take Toto for a ride.
The wind was roaring outside, and biking became near impossible around some bends, but it was pretty good procrastination. Soon enough, though, the time had come, and he was knocking apprehensively on Linda’s door.
She ushered him inside, taking Toto and sitting it with his jacket beside a giant fish tank. “Piano’s this way. Come, come.”
With a plastered smile and a bag full of tuning instruments he’d found in Jason’s closet, Carl followed Linda to a lacy living room and sank onto the piano seat with a rampant pulse.
Linda patted his head and her eyes glazed. “You’re a good man, and you’re on the right path. Keep walking, the grass will only get greener. Then you’ll find your happiness. You’ll see.”
Wee bit dotty, but a dear. Carl wiped his clammy palms over Jason’s ridiculously tight jeans and nodded. “Um, could I get a cup of tea?”
Linda swept out of the room saying she’d return with a hot Earl Grey shortly, and Carl whipped out his phone to the tab he’d opened on how to tune a piano. Everything he’d looked up said tuning was a challenging job that should be done by a skilled professional. Clearly Jason had such skills, but Carl . . . well, faking it could be an expensive ordeal.
He had a plan for this.
He opened the piano lid—check. He held the electronic chromatic tuner device thingy—check. He pressed a few keys while maintaining a sombre expression—check. And when Linda re-entered the room—check—he sucked in sharply, looked at her with a grimace, and said, “I’m sorry, Linda. My equipment is malfunctioning. Looks like we’ll have to call in another professional.”