Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
I let my mind focus on Cass’s voice and the feel of his body supporting mine. My head was on his shoulder. It felt good to no longer have to try to hold myself upright.
After all, Cass would never let me fall.
I wasn’t expecting this, JJ. I wasn’t…
They were Cass’s words but not from now. The man next to me was humming something as he continued to rub my back.
Those words had been his, but from another time. I could hear that little wobble in his voice that he got when he was nervous. I desperately tried to come up with the image that went along with the voice because Cass didn’t get nervous. He didn’t get tongue-tied. Or confused. Not to mention I sure as shit knew he’d never spoken to me like that. His voice, the silent plea behind the words, the hushed way he’d spoken them… I would have remembered that because they were nearly identical to the words he’d always spoken in my fantasies. We’d be wrapped in each other’s arms, our lower bodies intertwined as we both came down from the natural high we’d been riding from the moment he’d kissed me for the first time.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you, Cass,” I blurted, desperately squeezing my eyes closed so I could chase down the fading image as it began to disintegrate like ash.
“Something about me you don’t know,” he repeated.
“Something about you that no one knows,” I clarified. The image was already gone by the time Cass responded, so I leaned more of my weight against him and remained as still as I could so the pain in my head would fade away, just like the picture had.
“Your brother is the worst fucking cook ever… ever,” Cass said. I could feel his smile even though I couldn’t see it.
I chuckled. “That doesn’t count because I’ve known that for a lot longer than you have.”
“Fair enough. Okay, um, I can’t stand butterflies. If I see one, I’m gone. The little assholes show up in my dreams all the time, though. I wake up covered in sweat.”
“No way,” I griped. When Cass didn’t respond, I carefully opened my eyes. No blinding light, no searing pain. I forced myself to sit up so I could look at him while he spoke. Cass gave me a quick glance. His expression made something inside of me go warm.
A good warm.
A peaceful warm.
I’d never seen this side of Cass before. He looked younger, lighter… like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“You are,” I said. “You’re afraid of butterflies,” I repeated and then I was laughing.
“Okay, smart-ass, your turn,” Cass said before giving me a playful nudge with his shoulder. “Something no one else knows.”
I mulled the thought over for several long beats before saying, “When you first got your Mustang and I saw how excited you were about trying to restore it, I checked out a bunch of books from the library about cars and read them every night before I went to sleep. I couldn’t find a book about your car specifically, so I asked the librarian for help.” I chuckled as Mrs. Winsky’s face flashed in my brain.
“She thought I was asking for a book about horses. When I explained to her what I was talking about, she looked at me like I was crazy because what seven-year-old wants to read a book about a muscle car? When she told me the library didn’t carry that kind of book, I was heartbroken. She’d always been nice to me, so a week later, she surprised me with this huge book. It turned out to be some book about the history of Henry Ford and how he came up with the idea for assembly lines. She said it was mine to keep. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t the kind of book I’d been looking for. I read it anyway because it did talk a little about building cars. I must have read it a hundred times while you were restoring your car. I wanted to find something helpful so you’d think I was smart.”
“You were smart,” Cass murmured. I could feel his eyes on me. “I wanted to give up on that car so many times and just use the one I’d been given by my father, but you kept encouraging me… all of us to keep going.”
Cass fell silent. His body brushed up against mine for the briefest of moments. I was unable to speak because I was still trying to absorb his words. Had I, a kid who hadn’t even reached double digits in age, really been one of the reasons he’d kept going with his car? There was just no way.
“You changed something in me, JJ. Even though you were just a kid, you were the reason I made a lot of the choices I did long after we finished the car,” Cass admitted.