Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
I’m so fucking lucky.
But another thought came right on its heels, orbiting like a soft warning inside me.
Or you’re totally screwed, because none of this is going to last.
At some point, Ori would slip away again. From this bed or from Bestens entirely. But tonight, he was here with me. And I knew that was going to be addictive.
11
ORI
Turns out ‘possessive’ isn’t such a dirty word…
I stepped out of the old brick apartment building feeling like I’d just left one of the lower circles of hell.
It was warm outside again. I’d been stuck outside a nondescript two-story building for twenty-five minutes before the rental agent showed up to give me a tour of the place, and by the time I walked inside, I’d been sweating my ass off.
The tour had been even worse. Online, the apartment had seemed so promising. It was in Sable Valley, the next town over from Bestens that had a pretty big college and a good handful of apartments. I’d always liked Sable Valley, and the unit had looked pristine in the pictures.
In person, it had been anything but.
Now that the tour was over, I felt like I had to take a long shower and maybe some painkillers, too.
My phone buzzed as I walked the short distance to my car, and I pulled it out.
I had a text from Finn.
Seeing his name on my phone screen was starting to give me a little thrill in a way I didn’t like to admit.
I didn’t like the feeling of someone having that much power over me. But seeing anybody else’s name on my phone had been annoying me ever since I’d hooked up with Finn a few nights ago.
Hooked up with Finn, I thought, biting the inside of my cheek as I leaned against the side of my car.
If I’d gone back and told teenage Ori that anything close to a hookup with Finn would ever happen, he’d have rolled his eyes to the back of his skull.
A breeze hit my skin under the canopy of a tree with fresh green leaves all over it. I opened up Finn’s text, trying to whack-a-mole my own little happy flutter of excitement.
>>Finn: So? Did you find your new home?
>>Ori: I think I found Tennessee’s best-kept secret roach spa.
>>Finn: Oh no.
>>Ori: I’m telling you, Finn, the roaches must be feasting in that apartment. It smelled like weird chemicals. The rental agent had to pick up a half-eaten strawberry that had been molding in one corner of the kitchen floor.
>>Finn: No fuckin’ way.
>>Ori: One of the windows had a hole in it near the bottom the size of a baseball.
>>Finn: Naturally. How else are the roaches supposed to come in?
I snorted, pulling in a deep breath.
The breeze was finally making me feel a little bit better about today.
Or it’s Finn’s texts.
Goddamnit.
For years, it had been so much easier for me to expect nothing from anyone. No loyalty, no real friendship. After what had happened with Aaron, I was particularly wary of anything like it.
So I hadn’t let myself feel this way—that little flutter in my chest when I saw a guy’s name on my phone screen—in years. It felt dangerous.
But I also knew Finn was different. He might have pissed me off more than anybody else sometimes, but he wasn’t a flake. He wasn’t a liar. And he’d never ghosted anyone in his life.
Even if what we were doing was a weird little burst of curiosity for him, and we both knew it was temporary, for once I was letting myself enjoy some part of it.
Finn’s texts were fucking adorable, for one. I read them all in my head with a little southern drawl, just like he had in real life.
And fuck it. Maybe I liked knowing he was thinking of me sometimes, too.
I hopped in my car and made my way through the winding, forested roads back toward Bestens.
The forest gave way to farmland, and soon I was back. I didn’t even mind when I drove through areas that smelled like manure—it meant that the farms were gearing up for summer, and that soon, we’d have overflowing farmer’s markets.
Today had been the first time I’d left the Bestens town limits since moving back to town.
And driving back in was strange. Again, I didn’t have the same deep dread in my heart that I had the first day. Even if Bestens wasn’t for me, it sure was better than that hellish apartment in Sable Valley.
I parked my Beetle in the lot behind Red Fox. My shift in the diner was going to start in ten minutes. I slid out my phone again and this time, saw something different.
There was an email on the screen from an art museum I’d applied to volunteer at when I’d first come into town, before Thomas even recommended the other gig for me.