Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
The taxi driver waits for a charity Santa to remind the crowd that Christmas is also the time for forgiveness before he seeks an opening in traffic. “The best gift you can give anyone this Christmas is forgiveness.” Santa locks his eyes with Zane during the last part of his reply. “Forgiveness costs nothing, but the rewards could be endless.”
With Zane as shocked by Santa’s sudden arrival as I was Peter’s, we’re almost halfway home before he asks, “Do you want to talk about what happened back there?”
Mindful he means Peter and not Santa, I shake my head. “No.”
“Kels—”
I shut him up in the only way I know will weaken the burn circling my heart. I hug his hips with my knees, and then I kiss him.
He accepts the strokes of my tongue and the needy nips of my lips, but he doesn’t kiss me back. He doesn’t weave his fingers through my hair or meet my rocks. He stays motionless. Still. He forces all the weight back onto me.
“Kiss me.”
I hear his headshake more than I see it. Then rejection smashes into me hard and fast once he adds a single word to his reply. “No.”
When I attempt to dismount him, too devastated to remain straddling the lap of another man who no longer wants me, Zane grips my wrists and pulls me back onto him. “If you want to kiss me until you can’t taste the garbage his mouth spilled, kiss me. If you want to revenge fuck him out of your mind with my body, fuck me. Use me to erase the pain, Kelsey. But don’t ask me to stoop to his level again. Not now. Not after I’ve realized how much I could have fucked this up the night we met.”
It dawns on me that he’s still clueless I came on to him when he says, “I should have never taken advantage of you when you were vulnerable about something a douche with a bad combover did.” He tilts his head to align our eyes. “But if you need me, use me however you see fit. Just keep Peter out of it because he doesn’t deserve to be a part of this any more than he deserved to be a part of you…”
I break as the last word leaves his lips.
10
KELSEY
Have you ever met a giddy crier? You know, those people who get so embarrassed they got upset that they spend the rest of the day in a fit of giggles?
I’m one of those people.
During the short drive from downtown Ravenshoe to my apartment building, I cried enough tears to soak two circular imprints in Zane’s casual white shirt. I wasn’t upset about the end of my engagement. I had overcome that neurosis during the week I was snowed in with the overly affectionate yet still-PG-rated couple.
I was devastated that a man I’d met only days ago was the first to validate my feelings.
When did society stop rallying around the single lady when she gets dumped weeks before her wedding? Have we become so accustomed to separations that we’re immune to them?
I’d be devastated if my parents filed for a divorce, but it seems as if I would be the only one not flooding their inbox to ask what will happen to the toaster they were gifted thirty years ago.
I cried about the loss of human decency, and it was hideous. But instead of running for the non-existent hills of Florida when we arrived at our destination, Zane carried me up the stairs like he did the afternoon we sampled too many cocktails, and then ran me a bath.
I was already swooning that he knew not to rinse my hair with the bath water when he washed it, so you can imagine how bad the sways became when he asked me if I wanted to skip dinner and move straight on to dessert.
Regretfully, he meant literal dessert—as in chocolate ice cream and marshmallows with crushed candy canes sprinkled on top.
An excessive amount of sugar is partly to blame for my giggles over the past six hours, but I know most of it stems from embarrassment. I’ve never cried in front of a man before. Not even my father. He would have killed whoever made me cry, so I reserved the details of my heartache for girls’ days with my mother.
We would talk and eat chocolate while I whined about how every boy on the planet sucked. Even though she’d loved my father for decades, my mother would let me rant because she knew the right way for me to handle the pain was to find my own way through it.
Zane did the same.
He offered me a shoulder to cry on and an ear to bash, but he never once forced me to share my feelings or explain the nonsense Peter never wanted to hear. He supported me until I found my way out of the dark, and I’ll be forever in his debt for that.