Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“Why do you think you’re in love with me?” she asked softly as I positioned her knees on each side of my hips.
I sighed. I’d always been better with quick one-liners than I was at speaking about anything serious.
“I know I’m in love with you because I don’t want to live without you—”
“That’s because we’re best friends.”
“I’m not finished,” I said, putting my hand over her mouth. “I know I’m in love with you because I don’t want to fuck anyone else—” I glared at her as she tried to argue again. “Even when I was fuckin’ other people before, I was bored as hell and didn’t want to be there. Sucks for them, but I couldn’t help it. Once we’d been together, no one was ever gonna measure up, and I only took them out because I thought you were still seein’ other people, and I was jealous.”
She jerked my hand away from her mouth. “Please stop talking about your other conquests.”
“I know I’m in love with you because you’re the only person I wanna talk to at the end of the day. Because I don’t want anyone else to be the mother of my children—someday, in the distant future. Because I look at you, and my entire day gets better. Because when I knew you were hurt, I would’ve traded places with you if I could’ve. Because the thought of you losin’ your brother is tearin’ me up because I already know how bad it’ll tear you up.”
“Okay, I get it,” Nova said, her voice rough.
“I know I’m in love with you because when I look thirty years down the road, you’re there.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, your tits are saggy and your ass has gotten wider—” I laughed as she pinched me. “But I know it’s you.”
“My tits are not going to get saggy.”
“Eh, I’ll love ’em anyway.”
“All of that is good,” she murmured, reaching out to run her fingers through my hair. “But that doesn’t mean we should get married, Rum. Marriage is huge. You said you didn’t want to get married until you were forty.”
“I’m not gonna change my mind, No,” I said, pulling her hand away from my hair so I could kiss her palm. “Eventually, you and I will get married. If it’ll help us now, why wait?”
“She really said that we’d have a better chance if we were married?” Nova asked, unconvinced.
“She told me that if it goes to court, being married would make us look more settled and mature,” I confirmed. “That if it came down to us versus Ava that she couldn’t guess which way it would go, but if the other alternative was foster care, he’d more than likely stay with us.”
“I don’t like those odds,” Nova whispered.
“I like the odds without being married even less.”
I rocked back on my heels as Nova flung herself toward me, our upper chests colliding as she wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face against my shoulder.
“Why can’t anything be easy for us?” she asked with a sigh. “I just want to go back to showing up at your house to give you a blowie in the shower.”
My dick jerked in response.
“Best blow job I’ve ever had,” I replied, grinning. I slid my hands up her thighs until I could grip her ass in my hands. “I wouldn’t want to go back to then, though.”
“You wouldn’t?” she asked, pulling away so she could look me in the eye.
“Hell no.” I leaned my forehead against hers. “Worryin’ if we were gonna fuck everythin’ up, scared as all hell that sleepin’ together was going to ruin our friendship—”
“It did,” she pointed out.
“For a minute,” I countered. “But now, we’re better. Way better than we were before.”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck yeah. Now I know I’m going to eventually see you naked—” Nova chuckled. “And it’s not gonna fuck anythin’ up. It’s just gonna make shit better.”
“If only I could pull you into this truck,” she murmured against my lips. “But I don’t think there’s any way I could get funky without a bed.”
“Get funky?” I barked out a laugh, pulling away. “How are your ribs feelin’ today?”
“A little bit better than yesterday,” she replied with a grimace. “Still hurt like an absolute bitch if I’m not careful.”
“Then we’ll have to be careful.”
“If you can get me off without jostling my ribs, I’m here for it,” Nova said seriously.
“In the truck? Probably not. You think Bird will stay on the couch tonight?”
She looked at me with mock sympathy.
“Alright,” I said with a sigh.
I stood there for a few more minutes, kissing Nova and running my hands over any part of her body I could reach, but eventually we were interrupted by her phone.
“Shit,” she said, gingerly turning to reach for it. “It’s Bird.”
She answered it, her eyes on mine, and I knew immediately that something was wrong. I wanted to fucking scream. We couldn’t get an hour to ourselves, not a single hour, without some new problem popping up. I didn’t know how the hell Nova was handling it all.