Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 78142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
I grab my phone to see if anyone has texted me. No one has. Not that I expect Dragon to text me. Why should I care where he is?
I set my phone down when it rings.
It’s Brianna.
“Bree?”
“Hey, Dee.”
“Why are you calling? Aren’t you supposed to be enjoying your honeymoon?”
She giggles. “Come on. We have to come up for air once in a while.”
I can’t help smiling into the phone. I’m glad my little sister found her forever. Sometimes I wonder if that’s even in the cards for me.
“I just wanted to find out,” she continues, “how things are going with Dragon.”
Now there’s a loaded question.
“He’s out right now. I just got home from my first day at the job.”
She gasps. “Oh my God, that’s right! How’d it go?”
“It went well,” I say.
“Did you get that assignment you wanted?”
I frown, looking down at the flawed blueprint on the counter. “I’m not sure yet.”
But that’s all I say. Just can’t think about the rest of it right now.
“So…Dragon?” Brianna says.
“He’s all moved in.”
And he got arrested for soliciting, and he also got a weird phone call that has him so on edge we hired a private investigator to trace it. Oh, and he also gave me the best fuck of my life less than forty-eight hours ago.
But I don’t say that.
“Good. Does he seem okay?”
I draw a deep breath in. “I don’t know, Bree. I hardly know the guy. He seems fine. But you know as well as I do that he’s hard to read. He’s looking for some work to help make ends meet until you guys all get back from your honeymoons and the band starts working again.”
“That’s good. Jesse will be glad to hear that. Is he…staying off the sauce?”
“As far as I can tell. I took him to a party Saturday night, and he didn’t touch anything.”
She gasps. “You took him to a party?”
“Well, yeah. He didn’t have anything to do, and my friend Teddy invited me over to her place because she had some friends in town. It’s not like it was a huge shindig or anything.”
“But there was booze and pot,” Brianna says.
“Yeah, there was booze and pot. I told him ahead of time. But he said, and I agree, that he has to learn to deal with being around that kind of stuff. Especially here in Colorado.”
“And he didn’t succumb?”
“For God’s sake, Brianna, I’m not the man’s keeper. No, he didn’t succumb. But if he does, that’s not really my problem.”
She’s quiet a moment, until— “You’re right. I don’t mean to make it sound like it is. You’re his roommate, not his babysitter. Jesse and I just worry about him.”
“I know, sis. But you don’t have to worry that he’s living in a gutter somewhere because I’ve given him a place to stay for the time being.”
“And you have no idea how much we appreciate that.”
“I know you do. And we’re fine. We stay out of each other’s way.”
Except for the time we fucked like bunnies, but I’m not going to divulge that information to my little sister.
“I’m glad you had a good day at work, and I’m glad Dragon’s okay. Call me if anything happens.”
“I absolutely will not.”
“Diana…”
“You’re on your honeymoon. Enjoy it. Enjoy your new gorgeous husband.”
She sighs. “He is gorgeous, isn’t he?”
I can’t see my sister because we’re not FaceTiming, but I’m betting she has that just-fucked look on her face. It’s sure coming through in her voice.
Damn.
I saw myself in the mirror after Dragon and I…
I’d never seen that look on myself before.
And I liked it. I liked it a lot.
“Everything’s cool here, Bree. Go lie on the beach.”
“Okay, sis. Ciao.”
I put my phone down and continue to eat my fruit salad.
And then my phone rings again.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Dragon
We had a ring toss and a cornhole board in our backyard when I was little.
My dad used to play with me, and because I was way too little to toss the ring from where he could stand, I got to stand nearly on top of the thing, so I beat him every time.
Then he picked me up, threw me in the air, and said, “That’s my boy!”
I was four or five, and Mom was always stuck inside tending to Griffin.
Our grass was never green in the backyard. Colorado is notoriously dry, and if you don’t water your grass, it dies. Dad always kept the front yard watered so it looked good to passersby. But in our fenced backyard? He didn’t want to waste the money, so the grass always looked more like dirt.
That was okay with me. Little boys love dirt. I would run around in the backyard chasing bugs and butterflies and our old dog Cinnamon, who was my best friend.
She was a mutt. Looked a lot like a beagle. I loved that dog, and I was broken up when she died at the age of twelve, shortly before…