Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
“You’re not going to get it even after I told you?” she asked with incredulity.
I shrugged. “Why bother?”
Then I showed her why when I reached for the box of Cinna Stix, ripped open the plastic covering on the icing, and then dunked the stick into the icing, coating it three quarters of the way up with the ooey, gooey goodness.
“You have a bottomless pit for a stomach,” she pointed out as she started to lick her fingers clean.
I eyed her.
“I was in jail for four years. I was told what to eat. When to eat. How much I was allowed to eat. And that only had to do with eating. Don’t even get me started on the sleeping shit.”
Before she could reply, though, the windows started to rattle with the sound of an oncoming storm.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I hate storms.”
My brows furrowed.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Scary, I guess.”
She was lying, but there was no reason for me to press the issue. That would only solidify the ‘I care’ feeling she was likely already getting from me, and I didn’t need that.
She didn’t need it either.
Chapter 13
I speak three languages. English, profanity, and bullshit.
-Evander to an unsatisfied customer
Evander
After I finished my food, not stopping until every last piece of cinnamon was cleaned off of my plate, I gestured toward the door.
“Are you ready to go?”
She was shifting from foot-to-foot, I’m sure wondering what exactly I would want her to do now that she was finished eating and that she had calmed down.
At my words, she stiffened and then nodded.
“Yeah, I’m ready.” She stared at me for a few long seconds, then started heading toward the door. “I need to check on the animals, anyway. With storms, they sometimes get confused and do stuff they wouldn’t normally do.”
“Like what?”
“Drown themselves,” she muttered.
I stopped when she said that. “What do you mean?”
“Well, chickens aren’t the smartest animals in the barn,” she pointed out. “For instance, if a chicken was watching his other chicken friends get attacked, he’ll just stand there and watch once he gets himself a safe distance away. Me, I’d run the fuck away and not stop until my legs either fell off or gave out. My chickens? Every last feather was found in the main yard, meaning that not one of them ran any further away than their usual hunting grounds.”
I understood what she meant.
“They’re a little slow, I’ll give you that,” I amended.
She smiled up at me and walked out the door when I opened it for her, not stopping until she was beside my truck waiting for me to deal with the unlocked door.
I locked it, then headed toward her side of the truck.
Once there, I opened it, but stopped when I bumped her with the door due to the closeness of my body to her back.
She chuckled, and I cursed silently as her backside made contact with my still hard-as-a-rock shaft.
She didn’t shrink away from it, though, so maybe it went undetected.
It didn’t.
When I finally stepped back and allowed her entrance to the truck, her face was tinged with pink, and she was no longer meeting my eyes.
Wonderful.
The sky overhead rumbled again with thunder, and I offered her my hand to help her along.
She took it gratefully and hefted herself into the seat, then pulled her feet in tight to allow me to close the door.
I tried not to find the blush on her cheeks fascinating, but once I was back in the driver’s side, I realized that that was futile.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off the woman, even when I tried.
She was magnetic, and I wanted nothing more than to have her stay at my place and force her to hang out with me the rest of the night.
I was a lonely man! Surely, I deserved the company of a woman.
But then my brother’s shock at seeing me with Kennedy earlier in the evening played through my mind, and I wondered if I could get away with threatening everyone’s life that questioned why I was with her.
And I was again reminded that I wasn’t good for her.
She was a good girl. She had a lot on her plate, and she didn’t need my shit piled onto it.
We drove in silence back to her place, and by the time I pulled into the driveway of her house, I decided that I would walk her to the front door and then leave.
I should’ve known it wouldn’t work out like that.
By the time I’d gotten out, opened her door, and then led her up to her front stoop, the bottom dropped out of the sky and rain started to pour down.
Though, that wasn’t the problem.
What was the problem, was the way something ungodly loud crashed from somewhere inside her house.
“What was that?” I asked.
She ignored me and my question, then threw open her front door just to come to a stop when she saw the way her roof sagged by the front door.