Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
I’ve got nothing. I’m too busy ping-ponging my gaze between the two of them. Does Maren suspect something?
“Let’s go, Jaymes,” Fitz says, opening the door.
I scurry after him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with it. It started just fine yesterday. And I didn’t leave on any lights.”
And you kissed me last night!
“When’s the last time you put a new battery in it?” He opens the driver’s side door and pops the hood.
I rub my hands together and blow on them. “I have to say never.”
He chuckles. “You need a new battery. I might start it for you, but it probably won’t start when you leave work later. If it were me, I’d go to the gas station this morning and see if they have time to slip a new battery in it.” He treks to his truck and positions it in front of my Jeep.
“What do you need me to do?” I ask.
“Didn’t your dad teach you how to jump a car?” He rests the jumper cables over his shoulder while opening the hood of his truck.
“He died when I was five.”
Fitz eyes me for a second and offers an apologetic smile. “Red goes to the positive. Black is negative.” He holds up both cables. “Connect them to the dead battery first.”
I pay close attention because I have a feeling this might not be the last time I need to jump my Jeep.
“I’ll start my truck, then you’ll start your Jeep.”
After my Jeep starts, Fitz shows me how to disconnect everything in reverse order. “Drive around for a bit before you stop at the station, and leave your Jeep running while you ask them if they can fit you in. If they can’t, then call me.”
I climb into my Jeep, and he stands at my open door.
“Thank you,” I murmur before scraping my teeth along my lower lip and averting my gaze.
“Anything for my person.”
My heart doesn’t simply stop; it explodes into pieces so tiny I’ll never put them back in order.
I clear my throat. “Calvin Fitzgerald, there are rules in our household.”
“I’m aware.”
“I’m not getting evicted.”
“Neither am I.” He’s so confident.
Me? Not so much. “My job in Missoula is temporary.”
He nods.
“You’ll be nonexistent when fire season starts.”
Again, he nods.
I can’t look at him and say the words, but I also can’t dance around them any longer, so I grip the steering wheel to steady my nervous hands, gazing at his truck in front of me. “You kissed me, Fitz. Twice. Why did you kiss me?”
“Because not kissing you became too exhausting.”
A man has never broken my heart. Homeschooling helped by reducing the size of my dating pool. Casual dating has helped too. So it doesn’t make sense that I know Calvin Fitzgerald is on his way to obliterating my heart. Yet, I do. I know it with absolute certainty.
I slowly turn toward him.
Fitz bites the inside of his cheek with a downcast expression. I’ve never seen anything sexier than this man at this moment showing me a sliver of vulnerability.
He rubs the back of his neck. “And I have impeccable endurance, which means I have a complicated relationship with my feelings toward you,” he says, lifting his gaze with a tense brow. “So I need to be consumed by work. And I need to know that you’re temporary in my life.”
My heart digs through its emergency kit and pulls out the tools to construct a fortress around it.
I manage to say the opposite of what I feel. “It was just a kiss.”
Fitz’s gaze washes across my face before he relinquishes a tiny smile. “Yes.”
“Sorry, I’m late. Thanks for being so understanding. Stupid battery.” I sigh when Dr. Reichart meets me in the hallway while I slide my stethoscope around my neck.
“No problem.” She blows at the steam from her coffee. Already, half her hair has fallen out of her ponytail. “Did you get a new battery?”
“I did.”
“It’s come to my attention that you’re living with Will Landry.”
My brain trips for a few seconds. “Um . . . Will? Yes. He’s my roommate. One of three.”
“Are you two dating?” She’s moseying toward her office while she sips her coffee, her thumb sliding down her phone screen.
“No. It’s a house rule. No dating your roommates.”
Technically, it’s “no sexual relationships,” which I think has been fine-tuned by Calvin to mean kissing is apparently okay because it’s not sex?
“Is he dating anyone?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
She smiles when we reach her office, slipping her phone into her coat pocket. “Tell him I said hi.”
“You know Will?” Duh. She brought him up. I shake my head. “I mean, how do you know Will?”
“He popped my cherry, then ripped my heart out, threw it on the ground, and crushed it to smithereens with his mammoth black boot.” She stomps her foot to the floor and twists it like she’s extinguishing a cigarette instead of her proverbial heart.