Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
I love you.
She just kept fucking saying it.
My eyes sting, and I close them, not noticing my door opening until light streams in from the hallway. I stare as a pair of white skates with orange wheels glides into my view, and when she’s in front of me, I slide my hands up her smooth calves. Her touch lands on the back of my neck and slips farther up as I press the top of my head into her thighs.
I love you.
She just kept saying it like she hadn’t agreed to be his minutes before. Does she want me? Does she really think she wants me after everything I’ve done?
I brush my fingertips up her legs, hearing her breathe hard and her little whimper escape.
I lift Summer’s leg, and then the other one, pulling off the skates and holding them both in my hands. “Leave,” I tell her.
She stands there, waiting, but I don’t look at her face. I should let her stay. My brothers wouldn’t kick her out of their rooms, but I can’t look at anyone other than Krisjen in my bed. Not yet.
I don’t know when Summer leaves, but in a minute the room is dark again, and I’m gazing down at the skates.
Krisjen doesn’t want me. She wants to fuck me. Inside and out.
I hold a skate in each hand. “You found new ways to break me.”
I tie the skates together by their laces and set them next to my door. Ripping off my towel, I pull back the covers on my bed, about to climb in, but a beeping sound chimes outside the window and I stop. It’s the sound large trucks make when they’re backing up.
Prying the curtain aside, I crane my neck, but all I see are the people around the pool, partying with their music. Trace walks across the deck, looking toward the street like he sees something.
In less than a minute, I’m jogging down the stairs in jeans and slipping on some shoes. Opening the door, I immediately see workers placing signs and cones. The writing on the truck reads Department of Transportation.
“Fuck, what now?” I mutter, stepping outside.
I bolt into the street, slipping my T-shirt over my head as I approach one of the guys in a neon yellow shirt. I see Trace and Liv make their way, as well, out of the corner of my eye.
“What the hell is this?” I demand.
The road worker looks at me, grit all over his face from wherever they were earlier in the day. He points to another man, and I head over.
The guy wears a yellow vest over a long-sleeve blue UV shirt. “What is this?” I ask him. “What’s going on?”
He turns to me. “Sorry for the noise,” he tells me, directing another worker. “We won’t be long. I promise. Just dropping off some things for the morning.”
Morning? What?
“We’ll get started early, I’m afraid,” he calls out over the truck engine. “About five a.m.”
I glance at Trace, then Dallas. Both of them look at me, blank.
“Here’s the schedule,” the man says, thrusting a packet of papers at me.
I sift through, seeing it’s a stack of the same sheet. For passing out and posting, I assume.
I scan the notice. Lane construction. Atlantic View Avenue, Bay Hawk Road, Seminole Point, and Seascape Court. For the next two weeks. Lane closures.
They’re paving the roads.
“The streets will need to be clear,” the man goes on, “including that parking lot tomorrow.” He points to Mariette’s. “I know it’ll suck, but we’ll move quickly. You shouldn’t be inconvenienced for too long.”
“So after six years of me petitioning the city council, you’re just now, all of a sudden, getting to work?”
“I never know where I’m going until they tell me, sir.” He starts to follow his crew, still placing cones to detour traffic. “Someone pulled some strings for you.”
I look past him, locking eyes with Clay, who stands next to Liv.
“Was it your father?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. But she looks nervous.
“We’ll see you bright and early,” the guy shouts, waving as he continues his work.
The truck turns, taking a right down Bay Hawk, and I need to know if we’re getting sidewalks, signs, and streetlamps …
This isn’t a coincidence.
I walk up to my brothers and sister, the noise from the truck fading away. “What did she do?”
They stare at me, Dallas and Trace glancing at each other, and I don’t know who knows what, but someone knows something.
“She traded her house,” Clay finally answers. “Garrett Ames will back off for five years.”
He’ll back off? He’s not standing in my way of getting roads or trying to take the land?
For five years?
I narrow my eyes. “And what am I supposed to do with five years?”
She shrugs a little. “Find a way to make the land more valuable to the government than whatever Garrett Ames would do with it,” she says. “She bought you time.”