Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 116031 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116031 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Sitting up, she catches her breath, and without looking back, she whispers, “We should order food.”
When I sit up next to her, my heart still beats hard, but now my chest feels tight. I try swallowing down the mistake I just made and stand to leave the room. “Sounds good.”
13
Cate
He pushes his plate away from the edge of the coffee table and falls back on the couch with a groan. “I feel miserable.” Only some sparse rice remains. He can eat, but I’m not surprised, considering the man in front of me seems nearly twice my height.
I’m still surprised he’s here, though. Shane Faris sitting in my living room full of food we ordered together was not something I imagined when I started my day. But here he is, scrunched up on my couch that fits perfectly in this space, yet he’s too tall to be comfortable for long. His presence takes up even more space than his large frame.
Seeing him was exhilarating, and he made the effort to see me after landing. But the bedroom incident . . . Every time I start to give a little, to yield some of the protection of my heart, I see him separate from the image I perceived and the one he gives off. I stumble past attraction into the feelings I’m developing for him. That connection I once felt has reignited, and that scares me. But then that damn phone buzzes again.
Never thinking I was the jealous type, I’m not sure I could handle his infamy with the ladies. The mayhem of his life would crash into this little life I’ve built. And when it’s over, I’d be the one stuck cleaning up the wreckage to my heart while he moves on to someone else.
I touch my lips, still staring at him.
It would have been nice to share one kiss. Just to know what I’m missing.
Too late now.
“Me too. Why’d you let me eat that much?” I join in the misery, rubbing my stomach as if that will ease how stuffed I feel or the regret of what happened in the bedroom. Kicking my legs out, I prop my feet on the table in front of me.
“I wasn’t coming between you and that last eggroll.” Holding his hands up, he chuckles. “I need these babies.”
“Ha.” I try to giggle, but it kind of hurts to mix laughter with that much food in my belly and the remorse weighing me down. “Make it go away.”
“Think about something else. Where do you go for your happy place?”
“Physically? Hawaii. When I’m getting a pap smear? I also take a trip to Hawaii in my thoughts.”
“Hawaii and a pap smear are quite the image.” His eyes are hard to read while staring at me indifferently. “That’s a lot of information.”
“Too much?” I ask, rolling my head to the side, too lazy to turn it. “I forget that other people don’t talk about medical procedures so openly.”
“I can handle you.”
His referring to me over the topic has me reevaluating everything.
Does he want to kiss me? Or was that all me in the bedroom?
Why did he come to see me the same day he returned to LA?
He agreed to come over and let me feed him when he has all those text girls to tend to.
I’m so confused. He makes my heart and head twist the logic to what I want it to be instead of what it is, what we are, and maybe all we should be. Friends.
What if we were more?
What if we could make it work?
Is it right to play with my heart that way, to talk myself into what I know will be a disaster? Predictable and orderly are the furthest from what his life offers. It will only be a lose-lose for me once it’s done.
I drag myself back to sitting in the chair like a proper human and then tuck my legs under me, needing to get to the business at hand instead of the ridiculous notion of me, Cate Farin, dating a rock star. “Want to talk about what I discovered in my research?”
“Do we have to?” His eyes don’t even bother coming my way. His socked feet are suddenly way more interesting to him.
I laugh, but he doesn’t. “Oh, you’re being serious?” I’m now left guessing how to broach the topic. “We don’t have to if you’re too tired to talk tonight.”
He sits up, looking at me like I’m dragging him to the dentist for a root canal. “It’s fine,” he says, releasing a long sigh. “We have to deal with it eventually, so we might as well get the options on the table.”
I’m not exactly feeling the love, but I hope to turn it around. Or at least share a good laugh with him. “We have two,” I say. When he just stares at me unamused, I continue, “We can get an annulment, which would help us avoid a lot of other issues, like the press finding out and exposing you—”