Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 148704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 744(@200wpm)___ 595(@250wpm)___ 496(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 744(@200wpm)___ 595(@250wpm)___ 496(@300wpm)
“I say you call her.” Willie sits back with his arms crossed.
“Nah.” I press the heel of my palm into my eye. “I need to get my head on straight. Break away from her for a minute so I can think.”
“Why? Ain’t we keeping her?” Julius wonders.
A scoffed laugh leaves me, and I drop my head back.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Keeping her.
Davis came to me looking for a solution to her “problem,” that’s it. She didn’t ask for more, didn’t offer more than that fucking truck I don’t even need, but know it’d kill her to sell. It would be like breaking the last tie to her brother. But me and her, we’re on two different islands, and they don’t collide. I don’t deserve her. I know this.
I hide shit, do bad shit, hardly have shit.
Memphis drilled all this and more into me for years when I was nothing but a sucker surrounded by stony-eyed assholes okay with pissing away their parents’ life savings on classes they didn’t bother showing up for. He was my friend, and then he was like a brother, but not long later, he was nothing. Didn’t change the fact that his words were true and didn’t need to be spoken.
I was aware Davis was out of my league and that hasn’t changed.
I have no house, no stupid fucking degree.
She’s too good for me, but in the end, not even that shit matters. Those things can be worked past, I know that. What can’t, are the two simple truths that can’t be denied:
I want her.
She wants to feel wanted.
Those are two very different things.
I can give her what she’s after, no problem, teach her all she could possibly wish to learn, and show her shit she’s never thought of, but then what?
Let her go?
Allow someone else to have her?
Touch her?
Love her?
Fuck that and fuck no.
She’s mine until this damn deal is done.
After that, I’ll be her shadow, scaring away every man who dares to get too close.
I might not be good enough for her, but no one else is either.
And that’s fucking that.
“Uh, dumb fuck who left his wannabe woman with another man?” Julius lets the blinds loose, takes a giant bite of his corn dog, talking with a mouthful. “There’s an angry little virgin walking up the drive.”
My brows snap together, and he yanks the door open.
“For the record, I’d have dragged you to the room and handcuffed you there,” he tells her.
Davis completely ignores the man, slipping beneath his extended arm, eyes connecting with mine in an instant, but mine flash to the rag wrapped around her hand, a giant red stain seeping through it.
I jump to my feet, panicked. “What the fuck happened?”
“Sharing is caring?” She ignores me completely, getting right to it, putting me on blast for my stupid fucking comment, without knowing I shared it already.
“Sharing is caring,” she repeats, her tone now free of the sass she walked in here with. “At first, ‘I thought gee, Davis, that’s a strange thing for the man to say when every other second of every other day he gets growly when someone so much as smiles near his little problematic project—’”
“Problematic project?” I jerk forward, my eyes slicing from her hand to her face, trying to stay connected to what she’s saying, but going fucking crazy knowing she’s hurt. “Tell me what happened.”
“But then I played some things back.” Yet again, she continues as if I hadn’t spoken, hadn’t moved closer. “And I thought of how you kept reminding me how my virginal status was at your disposal. Your choice, your timing, and all that, as if I wasn’t fully freaking aware, but I need—”
“Oh, this is ’bout to get good,” Julius whispers.
“Don’t say it, girl,” Willie warns, leaning forward on his elbows.
“To know why you picked him. Not so I can argue, I won’t, I promise. I said you can pick, and I won’t fight it, but you know I’m a thinker, so you can’t drop a nuclear missile in my lap and just leave like I’m supposed to know what to do with it. I don’t. I one thousand percent do not know what to do.”
My head cocks, and I blink at the brunette before me. It takes a second, but my motherfuckin’ mind catches up.
“Excuse fucking me?”
My voice is low and gruff, rough.
Davis blanches, her gaze roaming my face, tension whirling around her more and more by the second as my body brings itself closer to hers.
“You won’t fight it.” The tips of my shoes touch hers, and she cranks her neck up to keep eye contact. “You won’t fucking fight it?”
“She thinks you want her to fuck the Ken doll,” Julius adds, as if I didn’t figure that shit out on my own, and Layla comes around the corner, propping herself there with a bag of potato chips.