Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 72561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Needing to change the subject and stop dwelling on it until I’d slept on it, I asked, “Did you use your inhaler?”
Her eyebrows raised. “No, but I’m okay now. I don’t like using it when I don’t have to.”
“How did you forget something like that? You always have it with you unless you’re here. In fact, I’ve always seen it in that little pocket in the waistband of your shorts,” I asked with a raised brow.
She walked to the table and sat. “God, I don’t know. I forgot my lunch yesterday. I couldn’t find my keys today. Then I was in the depth of my run before I even realized I didn’t have it.”
I sighed. “Maybe you should be a little more careful next time.”
“Thanks,” she said dryly. “I’ll try to remember that.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “How about you go cook us dinner then?”
She sneered at me. “You have two hands.”
I looked down at my hands. “Look at that, I do.”
A smile kicked up the corner of her mouth. “I’ll bet they can cook, too.”
“I can make French toast, fried eggs, and grill. That’s about the extent of it.”
She stood and walked to the fridge and reached to the top for the bread. “I have a half a loaf of bread,” she said as she dangled the bag from her hands. Then she opened the fridge. “And nine eggs. Is that enough to make eggs and French toast?”
“It’s enough to make eggs, or French toast. But not both,” I told her.
She pursed her lips. Then she started digging through the fridge. “Okay, well I don’t have any syrup. So eggs it is.”
I watched as she shoved everything back in the fridge, closed it, and then stood, holding out the eggs to me.
“Okay, what are you having with the eggs?” I asked as reached for the eggs in her hand.
Turning my back on her, I had to laugh when I heard her curse and yank the fridge door back open, causing the bottles in the door to cling against each other.
“I don’t have any bacon. Or sausage. Or any breakfast meat. I do have sliced baloney and turkey, though,” she said over her shoulder.
“Give me the butter and the turkey. Bread. Cheese too.”
As I cooked egg sandwiches, we spoke in length about what had gone on that day; this was the first time in years I’d actually told somebody about my entire day.
It felt right and freeing somehow.
“What do you do to work out?” She asked as she eyed my three sandwiches once we both took our seats.
I shrugged. “Run. Lift weights. The usual.”
“I run and lift weights,” she observed dryly. “And I don’t look like you do.”
“Thank God,” I muttered as I took a bite of my sandwich. “Otherwise we’d not be in the same room as each other. Good for those chicks that want to look like men, but my woman has to be soft. I want to be able to fuck you hard, but I don’t want to be worried about you snapping me in half when your legs wrap around my waist.”
She snorted. “You have something against female body builders?”
I shook my head. “No, I just like to be the one with the dick in the relationship.”
She started giggling, and my eyes went from the spreading yolk that had broken when I’d taken a bite, to her face.
Her eyes were so expressive.
Light and mirth danced in her eyes, and it made something inside of my heart melt a fraction of a bit.
“What?” I asked.
She waved her hand in a shooing gesture. “Nothing.”
My eyes narrowed on her.
If I’d heard the word ‘nothing’ from a man, I could safely assume that he literally meant ‘nothing.’ Now, when a woman says ‘nothing,’ it could be one of many things. One, it could mean, literally, nothing. Two, it could mean ‘everything.’ Three, it could mean, it’s something, but I want you to do the dirty dishes, and I’m still mad at you for looking at that girl while we were out to dinner last week where you ate the last bite of food off your plate, instead of offering it to me. Oh, and you forgot to pick up your socks off the bathroom floor.
Which was why I went the safe route, and assumed everything.
“What’s wrong?” I asked cautiously.
She stood and placed our dishes in the sink before grabbing the frying pan off the stove.
“It’s nothing really, to be honest. I was just trying to figure out what exactly you were trying to get at with your earlier talk about those poor women. What precisely do you want me to do here? Stay away from you? Stay with you? Are you done coming over now? Is this our last time together? What do you want from me?” She finally opened up.
I got up guardedly and started helping her; she washed while I dried.
“In answer to your question, yes I want you to stay with me. I want you. I’ve wanted you for months now. I’m tired of hiding us. I want to start over, and I want this fucking cloud of shit to get the hell away from me. With Varian taking that plea, he should start his sentence immediately. The threatening note I read, at the murder of those two women, should be obsolete,” I said as I placed a plate I’d dried in its spot.
Turning back to her, I leaned my hip against the counter and continued.
“Then again, today he pointed out that he knows about us, or at least thinks he does. And he would’ve had no other reason to tell me about that fact, unless he had plans that I’m not privy to, yet. So, yes, I want to be with you, but I want to be careful; I want to be mindful of everything we do together or separately. I’m hoping that once I have the names of the men that helped Varian, that I’ll have the murderer of those two women. If not, then I still have a fugitive out there being a vigilante for Varian Strong’s ‘purpose’ and we’ll have to adjust accordingly,” I told her.