Total pages in book: 176
Estimated words: 167257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 558(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 558(@300wpm)
“Someone should probably make sure he’s not about to go kill his wife.”
Rowdy shook his head. “I doubt it. Jada left him after that night everything came out.”
“Oh.” My heart gave an unexpected and perhaps guilty twist. If I had never played Sissy’s—Professor Saunders’s—games, Jada and Joren might still be together. They still wouldn’t be happy, but together and making each other miserable nonetheless. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It will work itself out,” Rowdy returned. There was still a lot of tension between Joren and Rowdy, who hadn’t spoken to each other without coming to blows since Rowdy confessed to fucking Joren’s wife for their entire marriage.
“Like we did?”
“Yeah,” Rowdy absently said as he looked around and then opened the back door of the pickup truck. “Hop in for a second. I want to talk to you about something.”
“Okay.” I didn’t think twice about it before I climbed into the back seat. Rowdy followed, slamming the door shut behind him. “So, what did you want to talk about?” I asked from the other side of the truck.
He jerked his head in his direction. “Come closer so I can tell you.”
Still riding the high of knowing nothing stood in our way anymore, I was slow to recognize that look in his eyes. “Really, Owen? I’m not fucking you in some random’s truck with other people around.”
“That’s cool, baby. We can fuck at home later with your mom down the hall listening to you ride my dick.”
Shit.
I’d forgotten about my mom.
After she’d woken up from her coma and the doctor cleared her for travel, Rowdy and I packed my mom up and moved her in with us.
She had been hesitant to leave the home she’d shared with my dad, but she was also in the final stages of her life, and mine was here, hundreds of miles away. It hadn’t taken much begging and pleading for her to decide it was more important to spend the time she had left with me than in that empty house alone with old memories.
The days following her waking up had been the hardest.
“You’re really here,” my mom whispered as soon as she regained the use of her voice.
“Yes, mommy. I’m here, and I’m so sorry that I left. I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder.”
“You’ve been fighting for so long, baby. I just wanted you to live your life.”
“I only have a life worth living because of you and Dad. I was just so angry that you didn’t tell me the truth, and now, all I wish is that you hadn’t.”
“I missed you every single day,” my mom told me.
“And I’m never leaving you again. I want to be with you every single day for however long we have left.”
Our relationship was still healing, but we were making progress, and I thanked God every day that He hadn’t punished me for what I’d done to Sissy by taking my mom away. I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to say goodbye, but we’d been given the gift of a second chance, and I didn’t want to squander it.
As for Professor Saunders, I never allowed myself to think about her. I’d known what I wanted to do the moment I followed her home, the moment I told Rowdy everything I suspected and we broke into her house and found the evidence—the emails exchanged between us on her computer, the stationary in her desk, the pictures of them from high school. Rowdy had no idea the professor I’d spoken so highly of had been Sissy, Jada’s best friend.
After I killed her, Rowdy made me go to therapy—for that and for so many things—my father’s death, my self-destructive behavior, the lake, my fear of abandonment, him…us.
The sessions were helping, but I didn’t think I could ever go back to that innocent girl I’d once been, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. If this experience had taught me anything, it’s that a little darkness was necessary to survive in this world.
And with Rowdy guarding my back, loving me in that unrelenting way of his, I never had to feel alone again.
“Okay, but make it quick.” I dove into Rowdy’s lap, his hands all over me, and my lips all over him as I reached for his belt buckle. My jacket and jeans were quickly shed, and my thong shoved aside as Rowdy got his dick in position.
“Goddamn, Dream.” He grunted when I slowly sank down on him. “You make me want to put a baby in you when you sit on it.” The sound of his palm slapping my ass echoed around the quiet truck.
“Not until I finish s-school,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Rowdy grumbled as he thrust into me. “I heard your lying ass the first nine times.”
“Me fuck up.”
I cracked an eye open and turned my head slightly to see a miniature version of myself, green eyes and all, standing next to the bed. His head barely crested the top of the mattress while he glared at me like he was ten feet tall. He still wore his T-rex pajamas and was holding his favorite cup in one hand and a book in the other.