Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 39740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 199(@200wpm)___ 159(@250wpm)___ 132(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 39740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 199(@200wpm)___ 159(@250wpm)___ 132(@300wpm)
“I’m coming to you.” I didn’t even give her a chance to say hello.
I hung up and barely had the patience to look for my keys because I knew how stressed she was about me not walking anywhere alone late at night, but I really just wanted to run back to her place as fast as I could to apologize and to reassure her that I am not that guy.
I made it in half the time, and it usually takes only five minutes or so to reach her condo. I bolted up the stairs to her door, and she was there waiting. “What’s….?”
That’s as far as she got before I snatched her up in my arms and held her tight.
I’m sure she could feel my heart beating like crazy, and it was all I could do to keep the tears I felt burning my eyes from falling. I haven’t cried since I was about five or six years old. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“What’s happened? Talk to me.”
She tried pulling back to see my face, but I couldn’t release her just yet. I was so afraid that I’d fucked up royally. That as soon as she had time to think about what I’d been planning, how I’d planned to keep her like some dirty little secret, that’s she’d be pissed, and rightfully so.
I can only imagine that the reality hadn’t set in for her yet, and that’s why she’d even let me in the door. “Forget my stupid revenge. I can’t ask you to do this. I can’t ask you to wait on the sidelines while I go on pretending that your sister and I are in a relationship. I don’t know where my mind was; forgive me.”
This time, when she pushed to be let go, I let her slip out of my arms, but I wasn’t expecting the grin on her face or the way she pulled mine down to hers and pecked my lips with hers. “Thank you, but I don’t need you to give up your revenge; in fact, I don’t want you to.”
She took my hand and pulled me along to the couch. “I don’t understand; what are you thanking me for?”
“For putting me before your revenge, that’s what I was waiting for.”
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because it had to come from you, not coerced by me. I wanted you to make the decision on your own.” She seemed really pleased about something, but I was still too much in the fog to understand exactly what was going on. I thought I was about to lose her because of my stupidity and that I would never get the chance to tell her that she had come to mean more to me than the revenge I’d been plotting for years. That I was willing to give it all up if it meant I could be with her.
“But what do you mean you don’t want me to give up on my revenge?”
“I mean, we can have it both ways if we use our heads. You can have your revenge, and we can be a couple, a hidden one, of course.”
“But I don’t want to hide the fact that we’re together anymore.”
“Oh, but you have to.”
“I don’t think you understand what the next few years are going to look like if we continue with this.”
“I know what you’re worried about. You think it would be hard for me to see you with her, but there are ways to get around that. Wait right here.” She left the living room for the bedroom and came back with her phone.
When she sat beside me again, I wasn’t expecting what I saw. She opened her phone and scrolled through some videos, all of which looked kind of racy from the little bits I saw. “My sister seems to have some kind of obsession with recording things that are better left not seen.
There was video after video of Lacey at her new college, and let’s just say she wasn’t in class. “Whoa, how many guys is that?”
“That, my friend, is the Amtrak of all trains. I lost count, never mind, it’s not important. You can use this against her. Tell her you’d go public with it if she tries to control you, but don’t break up with her. String her along just like you’d planned to….”
“Where did you get those?”
“Oh, I’ve been collecting shit on Janice and Lacey for a very long time, but there’s no time to talk about that now. We have a lot of work to do.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?” She just smiled and shook her head.
“A while now. Since you and I started hanging out together, I was hoping…. I was hoping that your feelings for me would change, that they would become more like what I was already starting to feel for you.”