Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 107667 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107667 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
I grin. “Hey, bride.”
Her eyes are bright as she asks, “Who am I looking up?”
All Owen has to give her is his Instagram name, and she goes to work. “Troy Walsh, thirty-one, born and raised in Charlottesville, Virginia. Works for his uncle, who owns CapitalCare, a company that helps athletes rise to their full potential, according to its mission statement.” She reads out the info like a damn FBI agent. “It says he’s single, but there is a picture of him at some college event, kissing a very gorgeous blonde on the cheek.”
Tennessee.
“Is this her?” Owen asks, holding up Tennessee’s profile.
I nod.
“Hold on, let me do some digging on her,” she says, and then she comes back. “Tennessee Dent. She’s twenty-four, lives in Knoxville—” Her words cut off, and then she looks at the camera. “Is this her? The girl Dart is broken over?”
I flinch at her choice of words. “I mean, I wouldn’t say broken.”
“I would,” Owen supplies, and I side-eye him, which he laughs at. But Angie looks at me compassionately.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I demand, feeling foolish.
She fixes her face and quickly says, “Wow, she’s the best in the company. She just had a birthday, but I don’t know that they’re together. His profile doesn’t have anything of her on it, and hers only has that one photo, which I think she looks pained in.”
“I think she’s beautiful,” I say softly, looking at it and admiring it, but hating it at the same time. I want to break that dude’s fingers. I want to smash his face. I want to grab her and never let her go.
“She is that. Very much your type, all thick and ready for the cuddles,” she says, grinning from ear to ear.
“Just like you, my gorgeous, hot wife,” Owen purrs, and I fall back onto the floor.
“Can you two not be so in love when I’m dying here?”
They laugh at that as I look up at the ceiling, letting my leg dangle over the foam roller. It doesn’t really matter if she’s dating the dickface; it’s not like she is answering my texts or even contacting me. She’s moved on. Like I need to do. But for some ungodly reason, I won’t.
“I’ll call you later, baby.”
“Okay, love you. Bye, Dart,” Angie calls, and I only wave before I cover my face with my arm.
I feel Owen’s hand come to the middle of my chest, tapping me there, before he says, “I don’t think I thanked you for taking care of Angie at the wedding.”
“Bro, I can’t do that right now. Thank me later, please.”
His laughter is welcome as I sigh. “What the hell am I doing?” I ask, sitting up. “I’m D’Artagnan Miklas. I can walk into any room, point to a girl, and she’s naked.”
Owen doesn’t disagree. “I mean, you may have to speak to her and not point.”
“But yet, I’m over here all sad and fucked up over a girl who doesn’t want me.”
Owen scrunches up his face. “You don’t know that, which is why you need closure.”
“But what will that do for me?” I ask, holding his gaze. “Will it change how I feel? Will it automatically fix everything and make me move on? Why do I feel like a dumbass?”
“I get that. Girls do that to you.”
I couldn’t agree more. “What would you do? If it were Angie?”
“I’d track her down,” he says, confirming what he said before. “I’d make her tell me to my face she doesn’t want me. But like you said, it’s not like I’d be instantly over her. And then I think of my stupid brother and how it doesn’t matter what the girl he cares for says, how she rejects him to his face in the middle of a wedding. He still loves her.”
I hold up a hand. “I just found out her last name. I can’t love her yet.”
“Crazy. Why would I say that?” he says dryly, rolling his eyes. “If it’s not love, what is it?”
I blink a few times. “A mindfuck.” He laughs at that, and I shrug. “I’m fully infatuated by her, but I’m not in love with her.”
“Yet.”
I can’t argue with him on that. “If I did have a chance just to date her and get to know her, I know I would. I just know, with her, I could.”
“I met Angie when I was nine, I think?”
“Fuck me. Here we go,” I groan, and he laughs.
“She knocked me on my ass, like plowed right through me on the ice, and I watched her skate off, scoring, and all I could think was, what the hell just happened to me?” he says, and then a soft chuckle leaves his lips. “She’s been doing the same thing to me since the moment she came back into my life. Plowing through me. And I still don’t know what the hell is happening, but I do know that I don’t want to be plowed by anyone but her.”