Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
“Anyway, go online and check,” she says, leaning into me too. If either of us leaned away, the other would fall over, so we’re both holding the other up. “Maybe he left his account active just so you have one way to contact him if you ever wanted.”
“He did look sort of sorry when he left, even if he didn’t say it. There were so many times where I could tell he was feeling something, even if he was doing his best not to admit it to himself.”
“Feeling something and denying it is still better than faking a whole relationship. Ugh. If I could get my hands on Aiden, I would…I would…well, it would be soooo much worse than cheese toes to the face.”
“I know.” I can’t even sigh about it. All I can say is I know. Because what else is there to say at this point? Everything that happened still brought me here, or whatever it is that all the optimistic shits say about the extreme tribulations they may or may not have gone through. It’s such a romantic way of looking at life, but maybe life needs a little romance if we’re going to make it.
She leans into me even harder. It’s hot out here and in the barn, but I enjoy her warmth anyway. It’s good to be one-half of a sticky sister duo again.
“I’ll log on with you if you want. If he’s not on there, then you might have to leave it up to fate and to the Neanderthal himself. He knew you. It might not have been for long, but I can’t see how he couldn’t help falling in love with you. He seems like the kind that’s pretty ill-equipped to deal with that kind of emotional knockout, so it might take him a while, but if you have faith, good things will come. Or something.”
“Thank you.” I blink back my stinging tears. I’m the opposite of what Beau tried to do. I’m feeling everything. “I needed that so freaking badly.”
The cats are still staring at us, but now, through the moisture blur, it looks like there are eight eyes and four of them. It’s also kind of creepy.
Two of them look like absolute units.
Chapter seventeen
Beau
It’s raining. Correction: It’s pouring. I’m not trying to sing old rhymes here. Nope. I got soaked to the bone in the time it took for me to go from the car to the porch. I should have parked closer. Or I should have called ahead. Quite possibly, I’m an asshole of epic proportions. Also? It’s September. And I’m starting to learn that September in North Dakota can be kind of wicked.
It’s cold.
It feels more like it should be snowing, not pouring. I guess it’s still too warm for that. Ironic, considering I’m back in the car with the heat cranked, shivering madly in the driver’s seat and trying to thaw out and get warm after waiting on the porch, soaked to the skin, out of said rain. I waited for five minutes. And then another five. Maybe another? I don’t even know how long it was. It might have been ten minutes, or it might have been twenty. I only rang the bell twice.
Ignacia—I still feel like I don’t have permission to call her Sam—had an old station wagon in the yard before, and it’s now parked in front of the barn. If she’s here and doesn’t want to see me, she could have come out to tell me to go away. Then again, she was always the sweetest, and I can’t imagine she’d like to engage in confrontation.
What am I doing now in the car besides trying to dry out and warm up so I don’t die of hypothermia? What’s my next step now that I came all the way out here—and yes, I know this is where she lived and still lives, even after the story about the up-and-coming fashion designer who had to quit her own life after an identity theft by her then-boyfriend broke. She was a sensation for five minutes, like most people are before someone else’s cruder and ruder story of the day took over. Aiden was sentenced to three years in jail. It’s not a lot of time, but he was facing up to sixty. Everyone knew he wouldn’t get that. Either way, I guess the world is going to be a slightly better place for those nine hundred and some odd days when he’s not in it. I hope jail doesn’t make him a better scammer. I hope he can reflect on the people he hurt, stole from, and ruined and then come out and do something else with his life.
Then again, if he doesn’t when he gets out, I’ll make sure he behaves. I’ll have someone from my team running surveillance on him at all times. He doesn’t have to know. No one has to know. It might be extreme, but I’m extremely sure if he ever hurts Ignacia, or rather, Sam, I will lose my shit. On the long list of things I’ve ever wanted to do, going to prison—even rich-person-style prison—isn’t one of them, especially not because I bash a guy up so badly that I nearly kill him.