Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 77719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Unfortunately, that’s precisely what I did.
With a scream, she jerked her body away from me, meaning that the shape the clay had been taking ended up with a chunk of it missing as her hand went through it.
Holding my hands out in front of me, I winced at the mess. “Sorry, I did knock, but—” I gestured to her ear pods as she gaped at me, blinking like she was trying to understand what she was seeing.
When she didn’t say anything back, I pointed at her ears and mouthed, “Take them out.”
Raising her hands slowly, so they were in front of her face, she looked at them, then lowered her head to her shoulder and started jerking it. It wasn’t until the ear pod fell out that I realized that’s what she’d been trying to do.
“Sorry,” she yelled as she tried to shake the other one out. “I get in the zone.”
Not wanting her to hurt herself, I moved over to her side and pulled the other one out, before squatting to pick the one on the floor up as well in case she stood on it.
“Sorry I made you fuck up,” I nodded at the wheel. “Can you fix it?”
Wincing, she held the chunk of clay up for me to see. “Seeing as how part of it’s in my hand, it might be easier for me just to start over.”
“Damn,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck. “I feel bad now.”
Throwing it back down on top of the rest, she shrugged her shoulders and stood up, then crossed over to where there was a large sink. The faucet had obviously been chosen specifically. It had a large lever that she moved with her elbow for the water to come out, instead of her hands covering it with clay each time she used it.
Holding them under it, she shouted over her shoulder, “It’s not a problem. I’d only just started, so it’s only a case of mashing it back together and starting over.”
The force of the water coming out the faucet made my eyes tear up. “Holy shit, is that powered by a jet?”
“Gotta have a lot of power to get the clay off, otherwise I’d be scrubbing away for ages trying to do it.”
“So you remove the skin, too?”
Shooting me a smile over her shoulder, she focused back on what she was doing. We’d been texting back and forth over the last four days, and the change in her body language and how relaxed she was now that the shock of my arrival had worn off was crazy. After the first messages, I’d moved onto asking her how her tattoo was healing, and then it’d just snowballed from there. She was interesting, funny, and smart, and I really enjoyed talking to her.
When she was done, she shook her hands off and then looked around for something before wiping them on her t-shirt.
“There’s supposed to be paper towels out here, but I forgot to move some over from the storage shed. T-shirts work fine, but they sometimes have some clay on them…” she stopped and looked down at the smear of the stuff right where she’d been drying her hands. “Just like that.”
Moving over to where there was a big roll of them, I walked back to her and passed them over, grinning when she repeated the process.
It had to be said, we hadn’t talked about anything of substance in our text messages, but whatever had been in them had warmed her up to me, and I liked that. It was only assholes that I wanted to be afraid of me, not women. Well, with the exception of one, but Hazel was in a league of her own.
“I came to talk to you about your security,” I told her as she dried off her hands, this time on clay-free paper towels. “Then I got here and saw that you’re surrounded by nothing.”
“Yeah, that was an issue for me, but before I moved back, Maddie and her folks got contractors to put in a security system and this workspace. It still sometimes freaks me out at night, but I’ve got lights that come on if anything goes through the sensor.”
“And I’ll bet animals trip it every night, scaring the shit out of you, right?”
“A little bit no.”
“And that leaves a lot of yes.”
“It’s better than nothing, and there’s an electric fence on the other side of the wooden one. The guy who owns it was sick of his goats getting out, so he had it installed.” Then, looking to the side, she muttered, “Doesn’t stop them, though.”
“That’s a great idea, but does he have a permit for it?” When she shrugged, I rubbed my face tiredly. “That can always be checked. What about the woods? What protects you there?”
“Well, I wanted to put a big fence up on that side because it’d stop whatever’s in there from coming in here. I was thinking about getting chickens, but I don’t want to do that if something could come and snatch them. Plus, I don’t really know a lot about them, but I can always learn.”