Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Hell, by the time she was done with it, I was convinced she wasn’t human.
It looked like she’d taken it straight out of the package that she’d bought it in.
“That’s impressive as hell,” I finally told her, eying the fitted sheet like it was an alien from outer space.
Seriously, I could only fold it in half, and then in half again before I decided that it’d never be perfect. Then I followed it up by rolling it up into a ball and shoving it onto the shelf with the other items that seemed to accumulate when you had a house.
“I learned it from my suite mate in college,” she said. “Mine used to be big blobs, but one day she walked in while I was ‘folding’ my fitted sheet, showed me how it was done, and I’ve never done it the old way since.”
Once she freed up the chair of the laundry, all the folded clothes now on the end of the bed, my eyes landed on a t-shirt.
One that was one I’d been looking for this morning, but hadn’t been able to find.
“Seems like you have some klepto in you,” I told her, nodding my head in the direction of the shirt.
She blushed.
“I…” She paused. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Of course she didn’t.
I took a seat in the chair and stared at her as she tried to make herself busy by putting up the clothes.
The t-shirt she tried to hand back, but I just shook my head. “Keep it.”
She bit her lip, then walked to the bed and very carefully laid it on her pillow before turning to me.
“I’ve got a little bit of a problem when it comes to men,” she said suddenly. “I know that you probably wouldn’t do anything that I accused you of today, but I can’t just turn off that part of my brain.”
I leaned forward and let my arms rest on my elbows. “Your father damaged something inside of you, and it’s going to take more than me saying that I wouldn’t do something like that to you to fix it. It’s going to take courage on your part, but if you’re willing to give what we have here a try, then I am, too.”
Her eyes went wide.
“What if I wanted to be exclusive?” she tested.
“What if I wanted to have you and no one else?”
She growled. “What if you decide that this is too much and leave when I’m head over heels in love with you with no way to breathe without you?”
I crossed my arms. “What makes you think that I’m not in the exact same position?”
She gritted her teeth.
“I know next to nothing about you,” she blurted.
“I’m an open book,” I said. “I have no secrets.”
Now she was just bringing shit up to throw at me because she was scared.
My belly was rolling, and I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to talk her out of not wanting anything to do with me.
I wasn’t the best catch on Earth, but I knew one thing for certain.
The woman standing there, the woman that stole my shirt…she was the one. She was it for me. There was no one else that would ever be good enough, and I’d always known it.
Chapter 20
No man is worth losing a friend over. Unless she touched his beard, then it’s game on.
-Hennessy to Krisney
Hennessy
“Tell me something…”
His brows rose to his hairline, and he sat back and opened his arms. “Whatever you want to know.”
Seriously, it was like this man wasn’t willing to give me anything. He may act all nonchalant right now, but the minute I started digging too deep was the minute he’d take a step back.
“What was your home life like?”
He gave me a droll look.
“You know about my home life.”
I did, but I didn’t.
Everyone thought they knew, yet there wasn’t a single person in this town, I didn’t believe, that had the entire story.
“I don’t…”
“There’s nothing to know, Henn. You have the basics. My mother was gone most of the time. She was more of a roommate than a mother. I guess she loved me in her own way, but at this point in my life I haven’t figured out how that was.”
I sighed.
“What interests you?”
His mouth quirked.
“Pretty women that have daddy issues.”
I flushed from the roots of my hair to the tops of my knees.
“And what kind of woman is that?”
I was playing with fire.
This had gotten out of hand very quickly. Why did this man have the ability to do this to me? He always had.
“You,” he said. “Only ever you.”
Something warm started to fill my belly.
He’d been slowly filling it all night, but now I was filled to the brim, and it was about to spill over.
I’d been seconds away from giving in, from throwing myself into his arms and telling him that I was sorry for being such a jerk.