Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 97337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Though he didn’t share his innermost thoughts with anyone, he’d always been very observant and because of this was able to see the void that was evident amongst his peers. But it’s the way he processes this information and what he does with it that puts him way ahead of his peers.
Not only did he start the summer job program, but since he knew that some of the guys playing with him won’t make it to the big leagues, he’d come up with a plan to make them all study hard and get the grades they needed to get into good colleges or universities.
It was a simple plan really, though not many knew how it came about. He’d cornered the coach one day when he got wind of something. He’d been talking to his running back and had passed him something to read. It didn’t take him long to realize what the embarrassment on the other kid’s face meant.
The very next day he’d ran the coach to ground and threatened to quit the team if the coach didn’t stop pressuring teachers to pass the kids even though they were failing. He knew the other man would have no choice.
Not only because of who Drake was, but because Drake had threatened to make his reasons for quitting known, which would’ve opened a whole rotten can of worms.
In the end Drake got his way and his team, a year later, was doing much better academically. He knew he couldn’t save everyone, but thought he’d save as many as he could.
His grandparents were so proud of what he’d done with the money, which had been a test of sorts in actuality, that they decided to gift him a part of the family enterprise when he reached twenty-five instead of having to wait for his full inheritance at his father’s passing. Something he hoped was a long time in coming.
“Just a few of the shops on the Drive. We’ll see how you do with those. You’re going to inherit the whole thing one day anyway, but this will be yours and yours alone when you inherit.”
That meant it would no longer be part of the family portfolio, but his personal holdings. Drake was already drafting ideas for making them better once he took over.
So, the young man that everyone was hailing was indeed worthy of those kind words, but for a lot more reasons than he made known. Drake usually just laughed it off whenever someone talked him up to his face, but the truth is it made him very uncomfortable.
They acted in his eyes, as if they thought he was perfect and he knew that nothing could be farther from the truth. His last girlfriend wannabe could probably tell them why he wasn’t perfect. But thankfully he never seriously dated anyone locally. He wouldn’t have known what to do with the line of broken hearts left in his wake if he did.
Not because he was a bad guy or anything. He just hadn’t met a girl that he wanted to get that serious with. Sex was one thing. He’d loved and enjoyed sex with anyone who offered, as long as he was interested from the age of fourteen.
He approached sex the same way he did everything else, like it was something to be conquered. He likes to take his time and do it right, which in the end only brings him more trouble. Because more often than not it made the girls he tangled with dick crazy and wanting more from him than he was ready to give.
It was all fun to the well-rounded teen, but he’s never been in danger of falling for anyone that he’d met, because there was always something lacking in the girls who threw themselves at him.
Maybe it was because his intellect was light years ahead of theirs, he wasn’t sure. He just knew that he needed more stimulation in a relationship if it was going to last for more than the hour or so it took to get them in and out of bed.
He wasn’t worried about people liking him because of his wealth, he was confident enough in himself to know he had a lot more going for him and made no bones about it.
But he did worry on occasion that he would never fall in love. He just didn’t see it happening. His own parents had met and fallen in love in high school, but he wasn’t even close to achieving that goal.
Besides, at eighteen, he really wasn’t even thinking about anything serious right now. There was still a lot he wanted to do. Though he’d always believed that he’d know his woman when he sees her and it really didn’t matter to him if it was now or later.
And so it was that these two who’d never met, never even so much as glimpsed one another even though they both lived in a relatively small town, became fated to meet in a classroom at Spring Valley High later on that day.