Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 132933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
My feelings aren’t a game. But they don’t know I have real ones for Donnelly, so I wipe my eyes with a harsh, frustrated hand. “Nonono, I’m not toying with Donnelly, and no one ever said he’d even want to touch me.”
“Uh, hello, Earth to Luna,” Tom says, “we saw you two doing more than grinding at The Green Room.”
“Humping,” I say, unashamed. That’d been one of my favorite nights out in a long time.
“Yeah, I’m almost positive he’d be down to get you off,” Tom says, rustling with his guitar. “Donnelly seems like the type who’d stick his dick in a random glory hole.”
“I wouldn’t be shocked if he already has,” Eliot adds.
My body tenses in defensiveness. “So what if he has?”
“I’d love him even more than I already do,” Eliot says gently, probably sensing my change in tone.
“Yeah, Luna, he’s cool,” Tom says.
Donnelly was Tom’s bodyguard for a year and a half during freshman and most of our sophomore year of high school. But Tom isn’t Xander. Donnelly didn’t have to go into Dalton Academy and wait in the hallway for Tom. He was new to security and more bodyguard than friend. And it’s weird to think there was a time that I saw Donnelly as only Tom’s bodyguard and not as Paul Donnelly. How he could be background in my world is a wonder. But back then, he was.
I try to relax remembering that Tom and Eliot like Donnelly, but it’s hard to shed my defenses.
In my silence, Eliot adds, “We’re just concluding that Donnelly would hook up with you, if that’s what you want.”
I try to ease.
“He’d likely fuck anything,” Tom puts out there.
“No, I’d likely fuck anything,” I correct. “I bet his standards are higher than mine.”
“That, I doubt,” Eliot says.
I didn’t think I’d come out of this conversation feeling more afraid to share and more protective about my feelings. What if I gushed to them and they thought this wasn’t anything more than lust?
Because people would say Donnelly is as much of a slut as I am.
What if they think it’s just instantaneous googly-eyed, surface-level love because we professed our love quickly? It’s just something built to play a joke on our parents. To freak them out.
It’s not built to last.
It’s not built out of anything real.
All I can manage to say is, “I don’t know…I’ve been on a slutty streak.”
“Sluttier than me? How dare you,” Eliot banters.
It almost makes me smile.
Tom must be moving because I hear footsteps. “Unless you want to mess with your dad, Luna, it’s probably best you’ve steered clear from being boned by the sluttiest bodyguard.”
“Agreed,” Eliot yawns. “What time is it?”
Noise from the bathroom suddenly stirs Orion, who’s been fast asleep at the foot of my bed. I frown, eyeing the closed bathroom door. Light switches on and seeps through the cracks.
I miss Tom mentioning the time. “Call you two tomorrow?” I say, and after our good nights, I hang up quickly.
Orion has already leapt off the bed. He whines and paws at the door.
I expect Donnelly to hear my Newfie and whisper to him, at least. He doesn’t respond to Orion’s distraught noises.
I frown more and whisper, “Is he okay, Orion?”
Orion shifts uneasily.
It sets me on edge, and I hop off the bed.
Donnelly came back really late from the hospital tonight. And he said he didn’t want to wake me. He was just planning on going right to sleep when he got home. Well, I know he didn’t just get to the penthouse.
He’s been here. I thought he managed to fall asleep before me. But something feels…off.
At the door, I hear sounds of rustling from the bathroom, and I knock softly. “Donnelly?”
No answer, but I hear running water from the sink.
“Donnelly?” I knock again. My stomach twists. He’s not…ignoring me? It wouldn’t be the first time he left me on read. That was before we kissed.
Before everything.
Before I learned he was SB tonight. Something has changed with us, hasn’t it?
But Beckett almost got hurt. Maybe he wants to distance himself from me now because of his family. That thought squeezes my heart painfully. I knock a third time.
“Donnelly?” I call, sensing something’s wrong. Maybe it has nothing to do with me. “Can I come in?”
He says something that I can’t hear, and then I feel wetness against my toes. A stream of water flows beneath the door. Panic jolts me, and I’m about to channel my inner-Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica and try to slam open the door with all my might.
But I don’t need to channel anything.
The door is unlocked, and when I push inside and step onto the wet puddles on the floor, all sci-fi thoughts jettison from my brain. My stomach clenches seeing Donnelly wide-eyed as he shakes a box of Lucky Charms into the stopped-up sink.