Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
I don’t think I’d ever backtracked so fast in my life.
But even my mom had lost her patience with her cousin a long time ago. I wasn’t sure what was said, but I did know that my dad had to grab Mom by the back of her pants and carry her out of the room like she was a bowling ball. That was after years of little cutting comments she was known to give to everyone.
So I knew I was going to be polite, but not an inch more than I needed to.
She was so mean, it honestly surprised me she still got invited places and that everyone hadn’t just had a meeting where everybody agreed to keep family get-togethers a secret so she wouldn’t go.
I settled for shrugging at her. If I didn’t say anything, maybe she’d get bored and stop talking to me faster.
It didn’t work.
“Where are your parents?”
That’s where she was going with this from the get-go. I should’ve expected it. “They’re in Nicaragua right now.”
Her “Hmmph” said everything. “Where’s your boyfriend?”
And she went there too.
I blinked at her; then I blinked at her some more. I couldn’t exactly call my aunt a nosey heifer, could I? As much as I might fucking wish I could. Knowing I didn’t have time, I smiled at her. “Which one?”
She blinked.
I hoped she got a bunion.
“It was nice seeing you, byeeee,” I called out over my shoulder as I sped toward the door and got the hell out of there.
Turning around, I gave the door both middle fingers. Fucking hell, I was going to have to tell Connie all about that shit. That woman was something else.
“What are you doing?”
I jumped and found a figure leaning against the pillar in front of the bathroom door with a big grin on his face.
It was Zac, and his face was flushed.
“Escaping my aunt and flipping her off,” I told him as I stopped in front of him, tucking my fingers back into my fist, ready to fight another day. “What are you doing, creeper?”
He snickered and ignored my question, throwing out one of his. “Which one?”
I reached forward and slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow, trying to pull him away. The last thing I wanted was for her to come out and see us talking and make some other dumb comment or question. Luckily, he let me. “Licha. She only managed to ask if I’d gained weight and then ask about my ex, so it was kind of my day in a way.”
He followed me toward the doors to the hall, his inner elbow cupped in my palm. “Your ex?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. She made it seem like she didn’t know we had split up when I know she damn well knew about it,” I explained.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him glance down at me, but I didn’t look up. “What ex?”
Well, it wasn’t like it was some secret, and okay, maybe I’d purposely avoided mentioning him, but it was just because I liked to pretend that stage in my life hadn’t happened. A whole five years. “Kenny. I don’t like to talk about it. We split up almost two years ago.” I didn’t want to tell him the rest, but knowing him, he was going to ask. “We were together for five years. He’s why I moved here. We met when I lived in North Carolina with Connie. His job transferred him here, then eventually Richard—that’s Connie’s husband—got moved to Texas, and they came back too.”
“Five years?” he asked slowly.
“Yeah, we were engaged for a minute and everything.”
Under my hand, his arm tensed. “I didn’t know that. What happened?”
Of course he was going to ask. “At first, it was the same old shit. He told me he was going out of town for work, but surprise, my coworkers invited me to go to the movies and I said yes, and he was there with his ex-girlfriend, who I guess had flown down to see him. He had his arm around her and everything. How about that, huh?”
There. Done. I glanced up at him and instantly met his eyes.
He was frowning. “What’d you do?”
We stopped just outside the doors to the event hall, and I let go of his arm. “I went to his condo, left the ring and the key on his kitchen counter, then spent the next two hours texting everyone that we both knew what he’d done and to please not tell him anything about me, and I blocked his number. Connie drove down that night with the kids and stayed with me. It just so happened that my lease was almost over with my roommate at the time, and I moved out two weeks later and got my new one.” I had originally been supposed to move in with him, but….