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 nostrils flared before his eyelids dropped over those incredible eyes. “Why do you ask so many questions?”
I narrowed my eyes right back at him. “I just want to make sure.”
“We don’t need to talk about it anymore. I told you the plan.”
I eyed him, telling myself that I could do this. That I could rely on him for a little while. I knew who he was. I knew his name. I knew he wasn’t as invulnerable as he’d seemed.
I knew secrets about The Defender, that I doubted 99.9999999 percent of people would ever know.
That meant something. It had to.
I could trust him. Some. Couldn’t I? I had no choice but to try. “Let me see if they have anything in here to make for breakfast, and hopefully someone will get here soon.” Which then reminded me….
He didn’t move as I brushed by him and started digging through the cabinets like this wasn’t some stranger’s house we had snuck into. Like I wouldn’t go to jail if we were caught. We were criminals now, technically.
But I was also a hungry one and a sick one, and one day I’d just have to pay these people back somehow too. Like the last ones. That should be the least of my worries right now though. I just wanted some food so I could take more painkillers.
It didn’t take me long to rifle through what turned out to be well-stocked cabinets. The freezer was packed too. For a moment, I’d thought about looking through drawers for cash, but I really, really didn’t want to do that. It was one thing to steal food but a totally different thing to take actual money.
But if whoever this Agatha person was could pull through and get us a car… and cash, then we would be fine. At least he had one person he could rely on for help. Maybe he had more.
I could feel his gaze on me as I grabbed four cans and a packet of biscuits from the freezer. So many questions rolled around in my head as I prepped the food that the silence wasn’t awkward. I was going to be living with him. Or near him. That was still a pill to swallow.
It made me want to sweat.
“Are you having another meltdown?”
That snapped me out of it. “No.”
The look he gave me said he didn’t believe me. Not at all.
And there must have been something in the expression I gave him right back because he blinked.
“Don’t start,” he grunted.
I stared at him.
He pointed at me. “No.”
I kept staring at him.
Alex narrowed his eyes even more. “Think of something else.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Anything.”
Anything?
Pressing my lips together, I tried. I really did, but my thoughts only went to one place. The same place they always did—to the three hundred questions that lived on my tongue at any given point. So really, it was his fault for why I asked, “Did you want to do something else? When you were little?” I thought about it. “If you were ever little.” I really, really didn’t think he’d been grown in a test tube at this point, but you never knew.
“I grew the same as you,” he told me with… was that a smirk?
And why was he giving me so much information? Because now he knew I wouldn’t be able to get away from him? “I wanted to be a fighter pilot like in Top Gun,” I blurted out, like he cared.
He grunted. What might have been a minute later, he said, “The only thing I remember ever wanting to be was a firefighter.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah,” he answered, giving me only that.
I didn’t mean to say it. I really didn’t, but it still came out of my mouth, probably because I was stunned. “The more time we spend together, the more you talk to me, the more I realize you are… you’re so much more than the spandex you put on. It’s weird.”
“It’s not spandex.”
Yeah, but it wasn’t like he was going to tell me what it actually was, was he?
But of all the jobs in the world, he’d picked one that helped people.
Was it really just me he had beef with? Had I done something in another lifetime? Maybe I had a doppelgänger who broke his heart?
I was thinking about that as I opened and dumped the cans of chili I’d found into a clean, newish pot when he asked, out of the blue, turning everything I thought about him upside down one more time, “What else do you want from your life?”
“Huh?” I asked, stirring the beans and meat.
He repeated his question word for word.
Was he really asking about me? “In the future?”
“No, right this second.”
I groaned a little. He hadn’t moved from his spot against the cabinets. The rest of him was still mud-splattered vogue. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his expression was a different one.