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)
-Me at the dollar store.
Evander
I went to her house three days after her sister had passed away. The funeral that I told myself I didn’t need to go to, yet went anyway. Though I hadn’t seen her there.
Why she hadn’t been there was killing me.
What would keep her from that?
Needless to say, I needed to go check on her.
I had to figure out what was going on.
I didn’t know what I was expecting.
One, I was expecting her house to be locked up tight. It wasn’t.
Two, I was expecting her to be somewhere outside, tending to her animals. It was a routine of hers, one she was very meticulous about. She wasn’t.
Three, I was expecting to find her raving mad and pissed off at the world. That was the furthest thing from what she actually was.
I found her in the bathroom.
Under water.
With a snorkel attached to her mouth so she could breathe.
It was surreal.
When men say that they love their wives and girlfriends despite their quirks, I don’t think that Kennedy ever got the memo.
Love was weird.
I hadn’t felt it before…not like this.
I’d loved my sister. I’d loved my dog. I’d adored my mother.
What I hadn’t thought was that I would love Kennedy.
But despite the weirdness and the quirky traits, I did. I loved her. I loved the way she loved her niece and nephews. I loved the way she doted on her chickens like they were actual human beings rather than animals. I loved that she always blurted out random stuff that wasn’t relevant to the conversation. I just loved her.
But I couldn’t tell her that.
Just like I couldn’t allow her to be more to me than what she was—a one night, one time, never going to do it again—stand.
Kennedy didn’t know what I went through on a daily basis.
She didn’t know the degree to which I was disliked in this small town.
She also didn’t know that I had revenge in my soul, and the only way it was going to go away was when that corrupt asshole of a police chief got booted out of his office on his ass.
She only saw the good in me. The things that she wanted to see.
Because had she seen it all, she would know that she was in love with a man that had a very high likelihood of getting hurt.
I was nothing but bad news. I wasn’t expecting my life to change anytime soon.
My brother, who was supposed to be my friend—my own goddamned brother—didn’t even watch out for me.
I had a way of getting rid of the people that were supposed to mean the most to me.
But as I sat there and watched her through the water, all of my worries seemed to just…disappear.
It sounded cliché, like I was just making excuses.
But when it came to this woman, all of my carefully laid plans were shot to hell.
I reached my hand down into the bathtub, wincing when the hotter than hot water hit my hand, and kept going until I reached her foot.
Circling my hand around her ankle, I pulled her down the length of the tub until her legs were hanging over the side.
She came willingly, and it was then that I saw her eyes on me through her mask.
She was watching me watch her.
“What are you doing in there?”
She blinked, then shrugged.
I offered her my hand, and she took it.
The moment she was on the ledge of the tub, dripping wet, she said, “My head hurts.”
“So you decided to submerge yourself underwater in hopes that it would stop?”
She looked away.
“Maybe.”
A grin kicked up the corner of my mouth, and she turned around to glare at me.
“What?” I questioned, my eyes sliding down her still wet body. “You have steam coming off your body.”
She tried to cover herself up better, but her arm could only cover so much of her boobs.
The other hand was at the apex of her thighs, covering up the thatch of hair that wasn’t covered by the way she crossed her legs.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, hoping to take my attention away from my perusal of her body.
I ran a finger down the line of her jaw, and then up again to circle a strand of wet hair and tuck it behind her ear.
“Doing things that I shouldn’t.”
She bit her lip.
“Like checking on you to make sure you’re okay.”
Making sure that her roof was in good repair—which it was.
She looked down.
“Are you okay?”
When she didn’t lift her head up, I did it for her by using one fingertip just underneath her chin.
“Look at me.”
When she finally lifted her chin, I saw the tears that were forming in her eyes, and once again, my belly clenched.
It almost seemed like that was its usual state of feeling lately.
Every time I thought about the woman, it’d clench up tight.