Total pages in book: 215
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
“I, umm . . .” he looks back at me, taking a deep breath and reconsidering. He nods toward his home. “Come on, we’ll talk inside.”
My brows furrow, and I go through the motions of getting out of the car and walking up the path toward the front door. He holds my hand, but this Noah isn’t the one I was with at the end of school, this one is unsure, and I’ve never known him to be that way.
“Is something wrong?” I ask in a small tone, my mind running wild with endless possibilities that could potentially destroy my world.
“Stop,” he murmurs, squeezing my hand as he unlocks the front door and leads me inside. “You’re overthinking it.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” I mutter. “You look at me like you’re about to be sick and then say we’ll talk inside. The end of the world is literally happening inside my head. If this is the big I’m going to college soon and want to explore my options talk, you could have at least told me at my place so I could have kicked you out, but now I’m gonna be stranded here and forced to ask for a ride home in the middle of my sob fest.”
Noah groans and stops in the hallway before turning back to me and pressing a kiss to my forehead. “You’re insufferable. You know that, right?”
I roll my eyes, and he drags me down the hall, past Linc’s bedroom and into his. He drops onto his bed with his back against the headboard and reaches for me, pulling me straight onto his lap until I’m straddled over him. “I’m not breaking up with you, Zo,” he says as I fidget with the material of his shirt, a nervous habit we’ve both become accustomed to. “I’m not sure if you’ve been around these past eight months, but I’m shamelessly in love with you.”
“Then what is it?” I ask, needing to be put out of my misery. “Hit me with it. Have you been recruited for some secret mission that requires you to fly to space for the next ten years? Only ten years in space is going to be like . . . a million here, and when you get back, you’ll be more interested in my great, great, great, great granddaughter.”
His mouth pops open, feigning offense. “Hold up a second,” he says. “You mean to tell me that if I got sent to space for some highly dangerous mission, which I’m sure would have something to do with saving the whole human race, you’d be down here, shacking up with some guy and having babies?”
“I mean, it depends. Was this space mission optional? Did they come to you like, we think you’d be good for this job, but if you’re too busy, the dude down the street has some time, or were they holding a knife to your throat, threatening that if you don’t go, they’ll destroy everything you love?”
“Definitely option two.”
A smile pulls at my lips, and I lean into him, bracing my hand against his chest and feeling the heavy thump of his heart. “Then you already know I’d be right here waiting for you.”
Noah kisses me and curls his arm around my waist, but as he pulls back, he lets out a heavy breath, and I prepare for the worst. “Zo, I . . . shit,” he says, not knowing how to break this news to me. “I know you have this whole plan for the summer to make the most of every second, but I received an email today—”
“What email?” I rush out, my heart racing.
“From the coaching staff at UA,” he says. “They want to get a head start on training, and the whole team needs to be there a week earlier.”
Horror blasts through my chest, and I feel our time together slipping away. “A whole week?” I breathe. “But that . . . So we only have . . . I don’t know. I can’t math right now.”
“Ten weeks,” he tells me as though he’s already sat down and painfully counted what little time we have left together. “It’s going to be alright. I’ll be home every weekend and blowing up your phone during the week. You’ll be so fucking sick of me, you’ll have to come up with new ways to tell me to fuck off.”
I swat his chest, gasping in outrage. “I would never do that.”
“You’re right,” he says, a smirk lifting the corner of his lips. “You’ll pretend your phone is broken and avoid my calls until I’m busting down the door, demanding an explanation.”
“Noah Ryan, you are more trouble than I can handle.”
He grins wide and the way those dark eyes sparkle has my heart racing a million miles an hour. His arm tightens around my waist, and he pulls me in, crushing my lips to his as we continue to make up for the three long years spent without each other.