Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 85453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
McKayla’s hidden giggles rumble through our conjoined bodies when I answer Kamil with an eye roll before entering the foyer of our house.
All vibrations quit when Kamil’s smarts kick back in. “If she’s not drunk, she should have no issue walking to your room, Milo.”
I get his annoyance, and I’d fully back his campaign if it were against anyone else, but fuck me, he is pushing my limits of understanding tonight.
I can’t get the image of my brother’s dead girlfriend out of my head and the gurgles she made as she took her last breath, so I sure as fuck am not in the mood for anything above watching the rise and fall of McKayla’s chest while she sleeps.
Tiph’s gurgles only lasted three minutes, and no matter how many times I screamed at my mother for her to compress her chest, she was too busy worrying about her totaled BMW than the horror her son would wake up to if my chest compressions were successful.
She left Tiph to die, and so did my selfishness. I tried to save them both, but when push came to shove, I concentrated on the person who’d stop me from sinking.
“It’s fine, Cash. I can walk,” McKayla assures when the glare I hit Kamil with is as icy as the water she plunged into earlier tonight. “I also appreciate you looking out for me, Kam.” I didn’t know African American men could blush until McKayla curls her arms around his neck and hugs him. “Both earlier and now.”
He accepts her praise with a dip of his chin before briefly returning her embrace. Then he pivots her to face the stairwell. “You should get out of here before I bring out the breathalyzer.”
She laughs as if he is joking.
He isn’t. There is still enough alcohol leeching from her pores to make a nun drunk.
“Are you sure you want me to stay here with you, Cash?” Her last handful of words is delivered with a quiver when we enter my room. It is always breezy because of its loft design, but its extra cool since the window we scaled out of weeks ago is open.
“I’m sure.” I close the window before fetching her a shirt out of one of my drawers. “The central heating takes a little to get up here, but by the time you shower and change, it should be reasonably warm.”
Her shocked expression doubles when I close the main door of my room almost all the way to expose a second door behind it. “So the rose fertilizer rumors aren’t true.”
“Very rarely are any rumors true.” I guide her toward the bathroom before switching out my towel for a new one. “Except the ones about my cock. They’re pretty accurate.”
McKayla rolls her eyes when I hit her with a playful wink. “I wouldn’t know.”
I could let her murmured comment go, but with my mind still on the fritz, I don’t. “Because you want to take what I’ll teach you and use it on Gabriel Fucking Sutton.” I can’t help the gag that arrives with his name. “The guy is a tool.”
“Maybe.” She enters the bathroom, her footing unsteady. “But at least he’s smart enough to know when I’m lying.” As she wedges a big chunk of wood between us, she murmurs, “You’re close, Cash, but you are not there just yet.”
Chapter 22
McKayla
As wisps of steam float around me, I stare at myself in the vanity mirror of Cash’s bathroom. With my hair too damp to contain, I’ve left it hanging between my shoulder blades. My eyes are wide and glassy, and my lips are rosy.
I look remarkably put together for someone on the verge of a panic attack.
I can’t swim, so when Vivienne pushed me into the pool in retaliation for ‘stealing’ her man, I thought my life was about to end before it had truly begun.
My family is my world, and the career I am striving to achieve is what I’ve wanted to do since I was a child, but everything else, all those little inconsequential things I didn’t consider until my lungs began accepting water instead of air, weren’t considered before tonight.
They were left on the back burner, simmering until they resembled the sloppy mess in front of me.
But do you know what is even more concerning than realizing I’ve barely lived even with a quarter of the game already over? Knowing the flashbacks only included snippets of the past month. My parents didn’t feature, and my brothers didn’t get a look in. Not even my beloved cat got a nanosecond of time.
The entirety of my flashbacks was reserved for one man.
The same man I begged to teach me how to kiss another man because I didn’t want him to know how badly I wanted him to be my first kiss.
I didn’t want Cash to teach me how to kiss Gabriel. I wanted him to prove the naysayers wrong, to shut up the critics who have Gabriel so confident we’re not a real couple, he thought he was in with a chance of kissing me after walking me home.