Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
The moment I felt my feet hit the mattress, I eased my body down onto my hands and knees, savoring the way I was feeling.
Moving into a modified downward dog position, I stayed like that, enjoying the stretch and wondering if the soreness I felt would ever go away.
It didn’t feel like it ever would.
Literally, it felt like I was always sore.
Not in an ‘oh my God I can’t move’ way, but in an ‘I just worked out and it kicked my ass’ kind of way.
Something loud banged outside, but I didn’t move.
The neighbor had a large dog that he sometimes left outside if it was cool enough, and he was a loud son of a bitch. His name was Goober, and he was a two-hundred-pound Mastiff that looked mean as hell, but was really a big ol’ baby.
Though, he did like to eat balls, toys, shoes, plants, and wooden fences.
After going outside when the neighbor had first started letting him outside at night and seeing him chewing on the chain link fence, I’d decided that I’d just let him be.
Once I got to sleep, I was a fairly sound sleeper, so it wouldn’t bother me too much if he did happen to be outside tonight.
Stretched out as much as I could get, I dropped down on my belly, and once more reached for my phone, letting my finger swipe over the lock screen as I looked at all the missed calls and text messages from Sean.
Not one of them was mean, though.
Most of them were along the lines of ‘call me please’ or ‘Naomi, please.’
The last one he’d sent, though, was short and sweet.
Sean (11:22 PM): You better be safe. Night, beautiful.
My heart warmed for the first time since I’d left him, I turned my phone to silent and let it drop to the floor. Then I reached over my shoulder and tugged the blanket over my hips and all the way up to my chin.
Once there, I closed my eyes and let my mind wander.
It was no surprise where it went.
That bearded man owned all of my thoughts, both waking and dreaming.
Chapter 13
I think we all want the same thing. Love. World peace. And to be fucked so hard that we can’t go to work the next day.
-Naomi’s secret thoughts
Naomi
I was in a dead sleep when I woke suddenly, feeling weird. Wind moving over my skin. A noise that sounded like a shoe moving over a hard surface.
I rolled onto my side, cracked my eyelids open slightly and stared at the open window in confusion.
Why was it open? I definitely didn’t open it. It was far too cold out tonight for that, not to mention my mother would kill me for letting out the heat.
Oh God, I could just hear her now...
Naomi, do you pay the electric bill here? Was that a no? I’m sorry, can you speak up, I can’t hear you. That sure sounded like a ‘no’ to me. I know you can’t possibly be saying yes, since I know for certain that I’ve never once seen any money leave your pocket to help me pay this electric bill.
But there it was, the window that had been closed when I went to sleep stared back at me obviously flung wide open.
I sat up in bed, fear slithering down my spine, as I heard the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle starting up.
Just as suddenly, I heard the engine accelerate as it pulled away, leaving me wondering what in the hell had just happened and who had left.
My mother lived in a cul-de-sac. She had a neighbor on each side of her house, but they were both elderly, and I was pretty damn sure neither would be on a motorcycle in the middle of the night.
Mr. Worsham was an elderly man in his late nineties who could barely walk, let alone ride a motorcycle.
Mrs. Cooper was a seventy-nine-year-old widower whose son drive her everywhere, but only during daylight hours because she was scared to go out at night.
It wasn't anyone who lived on this street. Not because anybody here disliked motorcycles, but because this was such a quiet neighborhood that if one neighbor had one, the noise from it would draw the other neighbors’ attention. If one of my mother’s elderly neighbors had suddenly taken up riding a motorcycle, she’d have told me about it right away. That would be big news on her street!
There were woods at our backs that ran for over seventy miles, and it was owned by a farming family who ran their cows over the land in a rotation every three months. So I knew that the sound hadn’t come from that direction.
Getting up, I walked to the window and looked out, shivering slightly at the cool night breeze that rolled through the window.