Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 166103 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 831(@200wpm)___ 664(@250wpm)___ 554(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 166103 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 831(@200wpm)___ 664(@250wpm)___ 554(@300wpm)
She sat on the sofa as Beck mumbled something about having a shower. Hux sat next to her, going through everything the hotel offered. Judd just stared at her.
That wasn’t off-putting or anything.
Beck returned just as room service delivered breakfast.
“What would you like to eat?” Judd asked.
“Oh, I’m not hungry.”
They all stiffened. Even Owen shot her a look over his computer.
“You have to eat!” Judd barked.
Something eased inside her. This was more normal.
“Judd!” Beck growled.
“I’m going to book us a massage!” Hux said hastily. “There’s a couple’s massage package. We could do that.”
And have a stranger touch her?
You can do that. If it makes Hux happy.
“Sure.”
“All right! I’ll go organise that.” He jumped to his feet and raced off.
Shoot.
You should tell him you don’t want that.
Judd looked over the food with a frown, looking unhappy.
“You’re hurting yourself,” Beck said.
“What?”
He reached out suddenly for her hand. She jumped.
Fuck.
Idiot.
It was only because she was exhausted, and everything felt so weird. But Beck shied away from her like she’d hit him.
“I’m so sorry. I apologize. You don’t want me to touch you. I get it.” He moved away.
Oh, no! What had she done?
Jumping to her feet, she tried to run after him, but her toe slammed into the coffee table leg and she let out a cry of pain.
She grabbed her foot, hopping around.
Fuck, that hurt.
Shit!
They all came running, surrounding her but not touching her. Owen reached for her, but she shook her head at him.
“No! Don’t!”
She was aware of the silence. The way they all stared at her, stricken.
Damn it. She was fucking this up. She slid onto her ass, and a scream unlike any sort of sound she’d ever made erupted from her.
“Fuck! Call an ambulance!” Judd barked.
“No! No ambulance!” She glared at him. “I’m not hurt.”
“You sound like you’re hurt,” Hux said hesitantly.
“She might have broken her toe. Show me,” Owen said, crouching next to her.
“My toe isn’t broken. I don’t need an ambulance. I need . . . I need . . .”
“What do you need?” Hux asked, crouched in front of her.
She stared around at them all, just so damn frustrated with everything.
“I need you to cancel that damn couple’s massage.” The words just burst out of her.
Hux gave her a surprised look that turned to hurt. “All right.”
“No, you don’t understand. Because I am so fucking bad at this!”
“Bad at what?” Judd asked, looking bewildered. “How can you be bad at getting a massage?”
“Not the massage! At all of this! I don’t know how to be in a relationship. I don’t know when I’m saying the right thing or the wrong thing. I don’t know what you want or what to do to make everything all right! I’m so damn lost and angry and frustrated and sad. But I don’t know how to tell any of you that.”
“Seems like you’re telling us now,” Beck said quietly.
What? Well. She guessed she was.
“Keep going,” Owen urged.
She heaved for breath. Well, what did she have to lose? If they wanted to walk away, then this was never meant to be.
Please don’t let them walk away.
Because she couldn’t live without them.
She turned to Judd. “I miss bossy Judd. I miss my Grumpzilla.”
His eyebrows rose. “Your what?”
“Um, well, oops. Forgot you didn’t know about that. My nickname for you was Grumpzilla.”
“Grumpzilla? Jesus.”
“You’re ridiculously overprotective and bossy, but I like that. It means you care. And I don’t need all of this.” She ran her hand through the air, indicating the hotel. “It feels scary to me. People coming in every day. It doesn’t feel stable and I think I need stable.”
They all shot looks at each other.
“You don’t like it here?” Judd asked.
Shoot. Was she hurting his feelings?
“Tell us the truth,” Beck urged, leaning forward. “Don’t stop now.”
“You’re not really talking to me, though,” she pointed out. “You barely even look at me. I didn’t jump before because I thought you would hurt me. It’s because since everything happened with Jonathan, you’ve barely touched me.”
“I . . . I . . . shoot,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to react like that. I want you to touch me. It was just . . . a surprise.”
“I understand.”
Then she turned to Hux. “And you.”
He pointed to himself. “Me? You don’t want a massage. Understood.”
“I want the massage. I just want you to do it, not some stranger!”
Hux’s eyes widened. “Me?”
She groaned. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“You want me to massage you? I can do that. I can totally do that. I’ll do it every day.”
She smiled. “I won’t say no. But I just want you to be yourself. All of you. I don’t need fancy hotels and lots of clothes and all the other stuff. I just want us all to be like it was before all of this. I know that’s not fair of me. I know there’s stuff to work through. But I can’t relax. I feel like I’m constantly messing up and it’s stressing me out.”