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)
And it was pretty wonderful.
I took another sip of my beer, feeling just a little bit more relaxed. There was no reason to be sad. I was here, out, trying new things, and that was exactly what I wanted. What I had always dreamed of.
“…he want?”
“He wanted to know where we were,” Selene answered.
I kept my attention on the crowd of people around us. This wasn’t my scene at all, I’d decided right after we’d gotten here. But I had to get a little more used to being in crowds. I still couldn’t put my face under the shower spray, but that was different.
For once, things were looking up instead of forward.
And that’s what I was thinking about when I squinted.
Because by the door to the bar, shouldering his way through the crowd, was a face I recognized.
Alex?
“Look who showed up,” Hiromi said, either seeing him or sensing him close by.
“Aww, you’re in trouble,” Selene whistled. “What’d you do, Gracie?”
I jerked. Was he scowling or was it my imagination? “I didn’t do anything.”
What was he doing here, giving us that face like he had something to be annoyed with? I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d been the one to tell me to contact Selene if I needed something. If my friendship with her was a problem, then too damn bad. I wasn’t giving it up.
That didn’t seem right either though, and my brain moved along to the next mystery.
“He goes out in public?” I asked them, knowing he could hear me despite all the sounds in the bar. The mall was one thing. This was another.
“Once a blue moon,” Selene answered, lifting her arm and waving it wildly like he hadn’t seen us the moment he’d come through the door or before. “He doesn’t like being around big groups of people usually. Too much noise.”
I blinked just as the tall, dark-haired man came to a stop at our table. In a light button-down shirt under the familiar black jacket he usually wore and jeans, he could have been a gorgeous anyone. A perfect anyone.
But he was so much more than that, and it was weird to think, as I looked around the room, that no one knew the truth about what else resided within those muscles and tissues and bones. He didn’t even have a beanie on. Could people really be that oblivious?
It wasn’t so hard to give him a friendly smile and say as casually as I could, “Hi, stranger.”
He looked from me to his sister and niece and gave them both his tiny, warm smile.
Selene, who was the closest to him, gave him a side hug.
“You didn’t say you were coming!” she told him with a bright grin as he moved to pat Hiromi’s back. “It’s not even my birthday!”
His gaze flicked back toward me. His smile wavered. “Gracie.”
A gruff “Gracie” was all I got? I’d had my head on his shoulder a month ago. I’d held his hand back then too.
“Come with me to get a drink,” Hiromi said suddenly, poking her aunt before pushing her chair back.
It wasn’t the fact Selene got up immediately that prickled my senses, but the fact that she did it with a smile on her face I’d only seen her use when she was being sneaky.
“Want something?” Selene asked Alex.
“Any beer is good,” he answered in a rough voice.
The aunt and niece looked at each other before disappearing into the crowd.
Alex slid into the seat that Selene left beside me. Lights flickered around, striking his face in different angles. Everything about him seemed normal. The same. I saw just enough to notice he had his contacts in.
He angled his body in the chair, giving me a good view of his thighs in those dark jeans. The nice black boots he had on. As handsome as he’d been in his tuxedo, and as perfect as he filled in his Defender suit, him in everyday clothes put everything else to shame.
I pressed my lips together before asking, “What are you grouchy over?”
“I’m never grouchy,” he said, dead serious.
I burst out fucking laughing, and it took me a minute to calm down. When I did, I said, “All right then. You look nice, by the way.”
He stared. His throat bobbed, and the second shit he said to me was, “I didn’t know where you were.”
I’d missed the sound of his voice, I thought as I shrugged, not trusting my own.
“You didn’t leave a note,” he kept going, his voice still that low, crabby one.
“I did at first, but I stopped leaving them….” That was a weird statement. How did he know about my notes?
“Why?”
All righty then, we were going straight into this. He wasn’t going to ask how I’d been doing, what I’d been up to. Okay. So I told him, “You were gone. I didn’t think you’d care if I left the house for a little while.”