Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
His eyebrows went a little up, pink suddenly tinting his ears.
For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to say shit.
But this was a man who went into burning buildings without blinking an eye, and now I knew he would have done it even if he wasn’t invincible.
“You were on your hands and knees,” he said.
What the hell did that mean? What was I doing on my hands and knees?
My face went even warmer. Hotter. So hot.
“Come on,” he said suddenly, holding up an even bigger cardboard box.
What the hell had I been doing in his vision?
I couldn’t ask. I couldn’t fucking ask. And why wasn’t he questioning the baby in my vision?
I kept my eyes down, ignoring the beating pattern my heart had decided to skip along to with this between us, and followed him out of the garage and down the driveway we’d waddled through, heading toward the downward slope part of it on the other side of the house. I kept my eyes on his wide frame. I thought about the vision I’d seen.
Him holding a dark-haired baby with my eyes, smiling. Alex’s hair was longer than it was now. There had been something different about his face though. He’d looked a little older? Or maybe just… less grumpy? More… happy?
We made it to the top of the gentle hill, and I stood beside him.
“You go first,” I said, trying to act cool when I felt everything but.
Those purple eyes flicked toward me. “Me?”
“Or we can go together?” I suggested. “You can be my Atraxian shield. Make sure I don’t break an arm.”
He bumped his arm against mine. “Let’s go down together. No arm breaking.”
I smirked and laid down the cardboard I’d been carrying, pushing it into the snow. I took a seat as forward as I could get without falling off, legs straight out in front of me.
To my surprise, he climbed on behind me, his long legs bracketing mine between his. I had expected him to make me be the big spoon. He pressed his chest to my back, settling his chin over the top of my head. “Ready?” he asked, his voice soft and almost mellow. Different.
I nodded tightly, and he slipped his arm around my waist. I grabbed the sides of the cardboard, feeling his free hand grab on to one of the sides too. And with our feet dangling over the front, we pushed ourselves forward and took off.
I laughed. He chuckled. Wind whipped us in the face. And when our makeshift sled stopped halfway down the bumpy hill that didn’t have enough snow, Alex held out his hand and picked up the broken-down cardboard box with the other. We climbed back up the hill and went down again, me between his legs, his arm around my waist, and we got even farther.
We did it again and again, and I laughed and heard his laugh low beside my ear. We molded the snow with our forearms and made a longer racetrack, then gave each other a push for momentum, trading back and forth going down before going down it together again. We got soaked, and I got light-headed from hiking back up the hill so many times.
I grabbed Alex’s forearm as we hiked up, and when my hand slid down it, I clung to his wrist, and he didn’t shake me off. Then we did it again and again.
And I thought about that baby with my eyes.
I thought about what that meant a lot.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
I came out of the shower and strained, thinking I was imagining hearing voices.
Just a little while ago, Alex and I had been downstairs eating chicken tacos in front of the television with the second Electro-Man movie, called Electro-Man United, playing on the TV. It was the movie where they’d introduced his secret brother, a smart-ass that simply called himself Steelflyer. It was my favorite movie. The two actors had such incredible chemistry. I’d tried my best to watch it at least. I’d been lost in my thoughts for half of it, and I was pretty sure he had too from the faces he’d made when I’d peeked and caught his attention already on me.
Mine happened to revolve around him.
I knew it was a waste of time to like him. My heart was being dumb by speeding up every time we were together. My brain had better things to do than try and put this puzzle that was our pasts and why we’d met together.
But it happened anyway.
The second the credits started rolling, I’d trudged upstairs to shower, hearing the quiet rumble of Alex’s voice as he spoke to someone on the phone. Who he was talking to or what he was talking about was beyond me. He’d been awfully quiet since our snow day, and it hadn’t escaped me that he still hadn’t gone back to “work.” I guessed he was still trying to make a decision about his future, but I had a feeling it had to do more with him not being totally healed yet than him not wanting to continue being a member of the Trinity.