Total pages in book: 199
Estimated words: 200280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1001(@200wpm)___ 801(@250wpm)___ 668(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1001(@200wpm)___ 801(@250wpm)___ 668(@300wpm)
Instead I say this: Which my brother would’ve done that night.
Me: No. Actually my brother would’ve killed you.
Beautiful Thorn: He would’ve tried, sure.
Me: And he would’ve been successful.
Beautiful Thorn: Maybe. Maybe not.
Beautiful Thorn: Either way it would’ve been fun.
Me: You’re crazy, you know that, right?
Beautiful Thorn: Yeah?
Me: Only crazy people think that murder is fun. Especially theirs.
Beautiful Thorn: Again maybe. Maybe not.
Beautiful Thorn: Still better than being a cruel, sadistic, should be kicked in the nuts asshole though.
Me: And that’s why you kissed me, didn’t you?
Me: Because you wanted to get punished.
Me: So our first kiss was a revenge kiss and our second was your twisted attempt at punishment for the first.
Me: Good to know.
I’m breathing so hard and so fast as I finish firing off all the texts, one after the other. Making me realize how angry I am. How furious that he thinks he can touch me and kiss me and put his hands on me, all because he wants to.
All because of his ulterior motives.
For motives that have nothing to do with me.
And everything to do with what he wants in the moment.
I’m about to type out a very long text educating him in the art of respecting a girl’s wishes and letting her make her own decisions when my phone starts to ring in my hand, flashing his name.
Or rather the nickname that I’ve given him.
I stare at it like it’s a snake ready to bite me or a gun ready to fire a bullet, and knowing that, I still hasten to accept before it goes to voicemail. I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off when he growls, “Our first kiss was beautiful and our second was fucking phenomenal. Because it was my attempt at giving you something more than beautiful. Something beyond beautiful. That’s what you deserve, you see. Not something just beautiful, something beyond that. Something out of this world. Something that doesn’t exist but can only be created. But mostly it was my attempt at giving you something that you’ll think about at night when you cry in your bed about me, when you think about how your first kiss was beautiful until I made it ugly, how it wasn’t like the ones you read in your sappy love stories. So no, our second kiss wasn’t an attempt at punishment, it was my attempt at giving you a kiss that you read about in your romance novels.
“Although I’m not gonna pretend and say that if it had been an attempt at punishment, I would have apologized about it. Because then I would’ve gotten what I deserve. Your brother giving me the ass-kicking of the century. Because what your brother did to my sister was an accident — although I’d still love to kick his ass about that — but what I did to you, I did deliberately. I did it with purpose and bad intentions. And if I had known before last week that you’re still hurting over what I did a year ago, I would’ve made such attempts much earlier. I would’ve taken matters into my own hands a long time ago and provoked your brother into beating the crap out of me until I couldn’t recognize my own face in the mirror. And as I said, I won’t apologize for that. And neither will I apologize for any future attempts that I make. So you can save your hissy fit, all right?”
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” I blurt out.
And then drop down on the bed on my back and put a pillow over my head, cringing in embarrassment but still clutching the phone to my ear.
“What?”
Exactly.
What did I do? That was not the way I wanted to go about it.
First, I wanted to confirm if my suspicions were right. And if they were then I would’ve…
Although now that I think about it, I don’t know how else I could have gone about it.
See, here’s the thing: I’ve been thinking about it – I’ve been thinking about a lot of things – and I’ve come to a conclusion.
Which is that I’m not over him. Not yet.
Just look at the way I kissed him back the other night. Like a complete ho. Look at how he still affects me; how he can rile me up and provoke me and pulls reactions out of me that he shouldn’t be able to.
But mostly, look at how every time I think about a baby, I think about him.
Every time I picture a baby in my arms, it looks like him.
So in short, I’m not over him. But I want to be.
And I have a plan for that. As to how to get over him. I just need his help.
Throwing the pillow away, I say, “Tomorrow night. What are you doing?”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
I exhale a sharp breath. “Because I’d like you to meet me at the corner of Maple and Candle at six.”