Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
He was a boxers guy.
Part of me had expected him to be a tighty-whities type of man, but he wasn’t.
His boxers were dark and short. His thighs were everything I had expected them to be. Someone didn’t skip leg day and hadn’t. Ever.
I swallowed to make sure my mouth was shut.
“Yes. They wandered too far from their campsite, but we found them,” he answered.
He bent down and pulled off his socks, and I swore there was something about his bare feet just visible that seemed more intimate than if he’d been standing there buck naked.
Drawing my legs up, I snuck them under the sheet and the heavy comforter, drawing it up as he pulled his other sock off, still watching me. I was doing this. Sleeping in his bed. Still not sure what any of this meant or where it was going but… going along with it.
He had been so nice to me lately for a reason, I understood now. Maybe he’d been distant because of his mom, maybe he’d finally just decided I was decent. I had no clue what drove him to this point now, of leading me to his room.
Yet it didn’t matter.
My mom used to say that most of the time, when you’re on a trail, you get to a point where another one branches off from it, and you have to choose which way you want to go. What you want to see. And I knew in that moment, that I had to make another decision.
For a tiny, brief moment, I wondered if this was fast. I’d been with someone for fourteen years, and it had been almost a year and a half since we’d split up. Should I give myself more time?
But in another tiny, brief moment, I came to my decision.
When you lose enough, you learn to take happiness where you can find it. You don’t wait for it to be handed to you. You don’t expect it in big firework-like displays.
You take it in small moments, and sometimes those come shaped in a two-hundred-and-fortyish pound man going above and beyond. I wanted to understand what was happening. I needed to.
So before I could think twice about what I was doing, what I was setting myself up for, I asked him, “Rhodes?”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you call or text me while you were gone?”
I was pretty sure I could hear my heart beating it was so loud in the silence that came right after my question. Just this thud, thud, thud that rang between my ears as he stood there, looking in my direction. Part of me didn’t expect him to answer until he finally repeated in surprise, “Why?”
Maybe I should’ve saved the question for when it wasn’t three in the morning, but we were here, and I might as well get it out. “Yeah. Why? I thought… I thought there was something going on with us, but then I didn’t hear from you.” I pressed my lips together. “Now I’m in your bed and I’m confused with what’s going on. If it means anything.”
He didn’t say a word.
I cleared my throat though, figuring I might as well keep going. “I thought maybe you liked me. As in liked me-liked me. It’s okay if you don’t, if you changed your mind. If you’re just being this nice to me because you’re a good man, but I’d like to know if that’s the case. I’d still like to be your friend anyway.” I swallowed. “It just… kind of felt sometimes like we were dating, you know? Minus the physical stuff…. I’m fucking this up, aren’t I?”
I heard him suck in a breath before saying, seriously, “We’re not dating.”
I wanted the floor to eat me up. I wanted to get up and walk out, or at least sleep in the living room and take my chances with the bat—
“I’m too old to be anybody’s boyfriend,” Rhodes said in that hoarse, solemn voice that carried so much weight on it. “But I do like you more than I should. More than you might feel comfortable with.”
He didn’t move, and neither did I. My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest at his implications. Even my skin prickled.
“I wanted to call you, but I was trying to give you room.”
“Why?” I asked like he’d just said he liked eating mayonnaise straight from the jar.
His answer was a sigh followed by, “Because… I’ve been watching you grow for months. I don’t want to be something you grow around. You were with someone who gave you too much shade before, right? I’d rather us take our time than me stunt where you’re going, who you’re becoming.”
I could hear my heartbeat again.
“I know how I want you to feel, but I’m not rushing you. I know how I feel. I haven’t changed my mind about anything, especially not you. I only want you to be sure of what you want.”