Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
When he’s done looking for whatever it is he was looking for on my face, he replies, “Because I can.”
Then something occurs to me and words are out of my mouth before I’ve thought it through. “Is it because you think that’ll get me to sleep with you?” I sit up straight. “Is that why you’re being nice because you think I’ll give in and—”
“I don’t need to be nice to get you to sleep with me,” he says, his features hard. “You’ll sleep with me anyway. In fact, you’ll beg to sleep with me, and you’ll sleep with me so many fucking times that you won’t get a wink of sleep that night.”
“Oh, is that so?” I roll my eyes. “Is that why you’re blackmailing me because you think I’m just begging to sleep with you?”
“Me blackmailing you is me doing you a favor.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he doesn’t let me.
“It’s me giving you a lie to hold onto. So the next day when you wake up after all the sleeping you’ve done, you can pretend and say you didn’t like it. You can pretend that you didn’t want it. You can tell yourself that you were forced into and that you didn’t beg me to let you sleep with me one more time. You’re a pretty fucking liar, aren’t you? So I’m just speaking your language. Are there any more questions and objections you have before we begin?”
“Yes,” I say. “I do actually.”
“Dazzle me.”
“If anyone should help me, it should be him. He’s my boyfriend, not you,” I point out.
“Well, your boyfriend”—his jaw is as hard as his tone—“is almost passed out drunk in a bar like the rest of his teammates because they’re taking the night off. Against all the rules. So I’m your only option.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Why aren’t I what?”
“Passed out drunk like the rest of your team?” I clarify. “If it’s their night off, it’s your night off.”
He stares at me with his usual flat look. “I never take a night off and I don’t get drunk.”
“Oh right, I forgot.” I raise my eyebrows. “You’re this extreme control freak who probably measures out his alcohol intake too.”
He keeps holding his blank expression. “I don’t know what they are teaching kids at school these days”—I narrow my eyes at his choice of words, but of course he’s unfazed—“but getting drunk isn’t cool. It makes you behave like a clown who has to stay glued to the toilet bowl the next day.” A pause then, “I had a real-life model to teach me the hazards of drinking.”
Oh right, his dad.
Of course I know about his dad. Who left them and was a neglectful alcoholic.
No matter what he pulled just now, I shouldn’t have brought it up.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Not your fault,” he cuts me off.
“Your dad,” I hesitantly broach the subject. “He—”
“No.”
“No what?”
A muscle jumps on his cheek. “I’m not talking about my father with you.”
As much as I want to know more about it, it’s not something I can push him about. Again, no matter what he just did. So I ask something else that I always wanted to know. “What about smoking?”
“What about it?”
“When did you start that?”
He waits a beat to answer. “Back in college.”
I so want to ask why. I so do, but I’m not going to. But then he goes ahead and explains, “People who smoked always looked peaceful. So I wanted to try it. I wanted to see what peace looked like.”
I swallow, my heart squeezing. “So why only one cigarette per day?”
“Because rules are important,” he says. “And because I don’t deserve a lot of it.”
“Don’t deserve a lot of what?”
His chest moves with a breath. “A lot of peace and cigarettes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand.”
I do.
I so do.
I need to. I want to.
Despite everything and myself, I want to understand him. Why he is the way he is. Although it’s not a big mystery, is it? He had a shitty childhood either due to his father or circumstances out of his control. So of course he’d grow up to be someone who craved it strongly. Rules, structure, control. I don’t understand why he thinks he doesn’t deserve peace, though.
But again, it’s not something I can push him to tell me.
“Well,” I begin, sighing. “I don’t know what they taught you at school back when dinosaurs roamed the earth”—I raise my eyebrows—“but smoking isn’t all that cool either. One cigarette or not, it slowly kills you and turns your lungs black.”
“Good for me then, isn’t it?”
“How is it good for you?”
“Because I think black may be my color.”
“Is it because you also have a black heart?”
“And a black soul to match. Like the devil.”
I stare at him.
He stares at me back.
I decide I won’t speak first.