Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Dangerously close.
Close enough that I could smell his cologne.
Did I take a few deep breaths to breathe it in?
Yes, yes, I did.
“I will. When all this is done,” I said, nodding.
“That’s not how it works. You’re not promised that day when all this shit is done. So you’re breaking your back day in and day out for some day you might never get. It’s a waste of a life, babe. Trust me. I wasted fifteen years of mine. I know a thing or two about this.”
“I get what you’re saying,” I said. “Really, I do. I think all the time about the years I’ve spent mostly just surviving, but what am I supposed to do? I have to work. I want to help my sister. It doesn’t leave a hell of a lot of time for anything else.”
He clearly had a lot of money.
And, sometimes, it was really difficult for people who did to understand what it was like not to. To know that daily struggle, the constant worry, the way you were constantly trying to find ways to lighten the load of that burden.
It was in the big things, of course, like getting a second job. Or even letting your phone get cut off so you could pay for the lights.
It was just as much in the smaller things, though, too.
Like putting back the “good” three-dollar canned soup for the cheap tomato concentrate. It was learning to be okay with brittle hair because the conditioner that works for you just costs more than you can excuse to pay for it. It was putting things in your cart—both online and in the store—and then taking it all back out again.
It just… eats away at you. Little by little. Year by year. And for many people, there just never seemed to be an end in sight.
You could only work so hard.
You could only sacrifice so much.
It felt like an uphill battle, only the hill just kept stretching higher as you approached it.
“Just because you have to work,” he said, and I felt his fingers snag my chin, forcing it up and over to look at him while I tried to school my features into indifference even as a thrill coursed through my system, “doesn’t mean you can’t make time to live too.”
Was he just… subconsciously rubbing his thumb across my jaw? Or was he doing that intentionally?
Either way, I felt like I was melting into it, as chaste as it was.
What the hell was going on?
CHAPTER NINE
Salvatore
What the hell was I doing?
I mean, for fuck’s sake, it was bad enough that I was showing up at her place unannounced, but getting all soft with her in her kitchen? When I’d been spending the last few days reminding myself why the hell I needed to stay away from her.
You can see how fucking convincing I was.
Showing up at her door.
Picking her lock.
Walking around her apartment like I had any business being there.
Then getting fucking jealous about the dishes in the sink.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed women. I wasn’t unfamiliar with one being on my mind. But it was in a very specific way.
I didn’t wonder what she was doing with her time when she wasn’t with me, or who she shared her time with.
It was fucked.
At first, I’d been able to tell myself it was just because I’d walked out of that bathroom with a throbbing, unsatisfied cock with her sweet taste still in my mouth, with the echoes of her cries ringing in my ears.
It was easy to dismiss the interest as unfulfilled desire. That was some shit that I could understand. But as the days went on and my thoughts drifted even more to shit that had nothing to do with going down on her, or her on me, or getting inside her sweet pussy, yeah, I started to wonder what the fuck was going on with me.
I never did figure it out.
But that strange interest eventually led me over toward her neck of the woods, up her stairs, down her hall, then into her apartment when she didn’t answer when I’d knocked.
And, well, the lasagne looked and smelled good.
Some strange part of me really wanted to taste it. Not because I was hungry; I’d just eaten. But it felt more important to me to taste it because Whitney had made it.
I didn’t get that desire, but I didn’t fight it either.
And I also didn’t stop to analyze why I was so pleased that it was fucking amazing.
Then the door was opening, and there she was.
It was the first time I’d seen her in her own clothes.
She went with a simple pair of blue jeans that cut off around mid-calf and a plain white t-shirt that tapered in just right, highlighting her waist, and showing off her great tits.
It was simple yet somehow sexy in its casualness.