Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“Your ideas about sex had to be complicated, Carson,” she said.
“Yeah. Yeah, they were, and I didn’t even acknowledge that.” I sighed. “Anyway, after you, I couldn’t lie to myself about it anymore. And I realized that I didn’t want to go back to the way I had been. Not just the business, but also, the nameless hookups, the one-night stands. I realized I’d approached any and all intimacy in the same way. The only difference was some of it was on camera, and some of it wasn’t.” It’d all been impersonal. It’d all been a performance. And the weekend with Grace had made it clear that that wasn’t what sex was supposed to be, because despite the pain of our parting, that weekend had brought me satisfaction that I’d never known existed with a woman. She’d stripped me of all my false bravado and I was left there exposed, just me, and it’d made me realize I didn’t know who the fuck I really was. I let out an exhale. “Anyway, then I shipped off and spent a couple years in caves in the desert which made it pretty easy to take a vow of chastity whether I had wanted to or not.” But I had. I had wanted to. I’d needed time and distance to figure myself out.
Grace smiled briefly against my skin and then let her lips linger there. “What happened with Ara had to bring up some of that confusion,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said on a breath. “Yeah. It brought up those feelings I’d had as a kid again. It’s hard to explain.” It was this weird, awful twisting of sex and violence that still sometimes haunted me.
“I understand,” she whispered.
And were there two words in the English language more beautiful, more comforting than those two? In that moment, I knew for sure the answer was no.
“And I think it’s beautiful that you’ve channeled that pain into purpose,” she said.
I kissed her hair and for a moment we were quiet. I could feel her heart beating steadily against my skin.
“Have you talked to your mom recently?” she asked quietly.
“No, I don’t even think she knows I went into the military. Not that she’d really care. My roommate, Dylan, lived in the apartment we had shared in LA until he moved to Vegas a couple months ago, and she never contacted him there looking for me.”
She nuzzled me. “She has no idea what she’s missing out on.” She paused for a minute. “Do you have any guesses why she might have done what she did for so long?”
“No, I don’t know exactly. She mentioned an uncle once when she was strung out. I got the feeling that he had done something to her, but she didn’t go into it. Maybe there was no reason. Maybe the drugs were the reason. I don’t know.” All I knew was that I hadn’t been enough to convince her to change. Maybe no one could have.
She was quiet for a minute, rubbing her lips whisper-soft on my skin. I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell her wheels were turning. “What are you thinking?” I asked quietly.
She was silent for a second before she leaned up on her hands again, her eyes meeting mine in the near-dark. “I was thinking about the buttercups, Carson. I was thinking that you glow as well. To me, you shine.”
I let out a shaky breath of gratitude and then smiled, but I didn’t say anything. I just pulled her closer and said a silent prayer of thanks that she was in my arms.
CHAPTER 32
Grace
“Wake up, sleeping buttercup,” I heard whispered close to my ear.
“Grrrhmmph,” I moaned and turned my head away from the annoying sound and snuggled back in to my pillow.
I heard a low, sexy chuckle and my blood started pumping just a little bit faster in response—but not enough to want to drag myself out of sleep. I was so warm, and this bed smelled so good. I turned my face into the pillow and breathed in deeply. Carson. That was crazy though. I hadn’t seen Carson in years. I missed him. I missed his smell and his touch. And so I’d stay in this dream world just a little longer. He was here and I didn’t want to leave.
An earthquake hit, shaking the bed violently and I squealed and bolted up, blinking at the room around me in terror.
“Still not much of a morning person, huh, buttercup?” Carson grinned down at me from where he was standing at the base of the bed. Standing. On. The. Bed.
“Were you jumping on the bed?” I asked. “That’s an outrageous way to wake a person up. I thought the big one had hit,” I grumped, falling back on the pillow.
“Yup. It’s like waking the dead,” he said, climbing down.