Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 87058 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 435(@200wpm)___ 348(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87058 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 435(@200wpm)___ 348(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
I’m in love with her.
Fucking in love with her.
I’ve never felt so alive as I feel when I’m around her, and if I let myself entertain the possibility that this could be, even for a second, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to live my normal life again.
So I don’t.
I say the right thing.
The sensible thing.
No, I don’t want her and you shouldn’t either. She’s barely even eighteen, Jack. She’s a girl who needs care, not fucking cock.
I don’t get a response to that one.
And I don’t get any fucking sleep either.
Chapter Twelve
Jack
Carrie Wells is a one-girl whirlwind of backchat in my once peaceful home. She’s noisy and obnoxious, messy and disorganised with no respect whatsoever for timekeeping.
Every evening I head home from work nervous of what the fuck I’ll find there, and yet I’m still excited when I turn the key in my front door.
Michael’s right, of course. There’s no way he should contemplate fucking Carrie Wells, and neither should I.
But I am contemplating it. I’m contemplating it every fucking minute.
Still, I do try to talk myself down from pursuing that tight little pussy of hers, simply because I have no idea where that kind of crap would lead any of us. The girl is a loose cannon, and I’ve never been one for commitment. I’m rarely still interested in a woman after she’s spent the night in my bed, and where would that leave our living arrangement if it comes to a thanks, but no thanks next morning?
You know what they say: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – and Carrie Wells is both crazy and furious enough to make Hell’s own demons shit a ton of bricks. I really don’t need that kind of insanity on my plate, not while she’s holed up in my house.
But that’s really not what concerns me at the heart of it, not if I’m being totally honest with myself.
What concerns me most of all, is that this excitement I feel around Carrie Wells would survive a night in my bed, and escalate all the more because of it.
There’s no doubt she’s craving some kind of stability, and as grotesquely adult and responsible as it is, I feel a strange compulsion to help the girl find her own straight and narrow and keep her on it.
I know that helping Carrie has been Michael’s job for the past five months, and I know he’s been giving it his all, but whereas Michael usually has the experience to excel in this kind of one-on-one coaching, I can’t help but feel he’s slightly off the mark with this one.
Scrap that, I think he’s well off the mark with this one.
Call me arrogant for forming an opinion after just a few days in her company, but I really think I’m onto something.
Where Michael is trying the calm, stable and supportive routine, I think he should be giving her an earful of shit. Where Michael seems like he wants to wrap her broken bits in cotton wool, I think he should be putting a heavy foot down on her bad behaviour,
In short, I think Carrie Wells needs discipline as well as support. Probably even more so.
I think she needs a heavy hand to keep her in line, and I think she’d flourish for it.
I think she’d even like it.
I know Michael’s hands were mostly tied at work. He had boxes to tick and guidelines to adhere to. He had allocated time slots to make a difference and the clock was always ticking.
But not anymore. Not here.
Not for any of us.
I strongly doubt Carrie’s ever been given boundaries by someone who isn’t intimidated by her craziness. I doubt she’s ever been made to understand the concept of tough love.
Maybe not even any love.
I see it in her eyes when they meet mine over our late night beer. I hear it in her voice when she tells me she doesn’t need anyone and doesn’t give a fuck what I think of her approach to loading up the dishwasher so insanely high it’s almost impossible to close.
She’s a bag of backchat and bluster, pushing and poking me for a reaction whenever I’m in her company, but I see enough to get a sense of the troublesome girl with the raven hair.
It’s not that Michael isn’t around enough to draw his own conclusions about what Carrie needs. He heads over every evening when his workday is done to check in on her. He makes calls to various associations about her living arrangements and talks her through the paperwork, even though she’s thoroughly disinterested in everything he’s doing for her.
Carrie gives him nothing because she’s a snotty bitch who’s punishing him for sticking to his morals. I see it even if he can’t.
That’s why I decide to broach it with her after the first swig of beer goes down a treat this evening.