Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 85725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
Wordlessly requesting I keep them where they are.
And the doubt in the front of my mind that that’s what she’s asking gets aggressively slammed to the back when she peers up at me while less than innocently biting her bottom lip.
Um…okay. This uh…happening?
“What do you think about…uh…an uh…,” getting my brain to focus on words rather than having her glossed lips on top of mine feels impossible, “um…the edges?”
“Huh?”
Her cluelessness causes my ability to speak correctly to go back into place. “The trim.” I clear my throat and continue the conversation. “What color should we do for the trim?”
“Oh!” She whips her head back to the wall, free bouncing curls slapping more sense into me. “I think anything in the white family should do. I don’t really like white like I said, but I think it meshes well for a trim. Maybe something off white? More beige? Something that will blend better?”
“Most of those were questions, sweetheart.”
Jaye noticeably lights up over the nickname yet doesn’t outwardly acknowledge it. “I know. I’m just throwing things out there. Seeing what you want.” Her gaze meets mine as she adds. “What we want.”
Hm? Yeah, now would be a great time to be like us naked and banging on that bathroom floor, but I’m not gonna say it, just like it’s not gonna happen.
“I think an off white-shade is a good idea.”
Us, on the other hand?
Not so much.
She resumes browsing her options while I investigate other areas of renovations. “I know we need to get some shit for me to fix the towel racks that are a bit wobbly and that small leak under the sink, but do you wanna look at anything else while we’re here? Cabinets? Toilets? Lighting?”
“That’s a lot of different things,” Jaye stops mid movement of grabbing a piece of paper to meet my gaze again. “You really know how to do all that?”
“Mostly, yeah.” The expression on my face struggles not to fall. “I grew up in foster care and learned early on, the more useful I could make myself, the longer I might get to stay. I picked up tidbits of basic shit as early as eight, so by the time I was sixteen, it was a lot easier to do more of the complicated shit my last foster father was eager to teach me about.”
She doesn’t hide the heartache that appears in her eyes. “You know you don’t have to be ‘useful’ to stay with me, right, Archer?” Her body presses firmly against mine robbing me of the breath I didn’t realize I had been holding. “I want you around regardless of if you do any of this shit or not.”
Fuck, I know it, but it feels damn good to hear it.
I offer her the only thing I’m capable of.
A tiny nod.
Jaye quietly and cautiously inquires, “What happened to your parents?”
The question fills me with dread – even all these years later. “The man responsible for helping create me beat my mother to death in front of my own eyes with a baseball bat. And had the neighbor across the street not been as nosey as she was, he might’ve done the same to me too instead of me being carried away by the first responder who found me hiding in the pantry.”
One hand covers her mouth to try to catch the gasp that escapes.
“That’s actually the reason I originally wanted to be an EMT, but that shit costs and money wasn’t something I had much of considering how I was bounced around the system. At graduation, the choices were go to the military or move out on my own, which we all knew I didn’t have the funds for. I’m just grateful they let me stay until basic.” Uncomfortableness about a subject I rarely speak on has me anxiously fidgeting. “I thought about being a field medic, but truth was, I really only wanted to help people the way I had been helped, ya know?” A small shrug slips in between statements. “I eventually believed I could do that for my own country on a grander scale which is bullshit I bought into when I joined only to realize that it was indeed bullshit and that a lot like the system I had come from, it was broken, too. The difference was…being a grunt gave me more stability. It gave me brothers. It gave me…hope.” Disgust causes me to sneer and unwind myself from the female beside me before I can tarnish her. “And then all that shit was taken away by the same people who gave it to me when they let me become another form they forgot to file.”
Jaye’s entire face falls, “Archer-”
“Hey,” anxious to change the subject as well as create breathing room for myself, I retreat myself back to the cart, “what if I pick up an application here? Put some of that knowledge to use?”