Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“Convenient thing, getting so drunk you forget your stupid antics, eh?”
“Very,” he says with a smirk.
That was the first time I put my neck on the line for somebody, but it wouldn't be the last. I would do that for Timeo over and over and over again.
I laugh at the memory. "I stole Sergio’s car and pretended that I was lost in Boston. He was so mad at me. I think it was the first time he was really mad at me and not just annoyed. The only reason why I did it was so he wouldn't notice what you did to his car."
“Jesus, tell me about it,” he groans.
“You know, you were my first friend," I tell him candidly. "I knew people back in the fellowship, women, and girls mostly my age. But they were all brainwashed. They believed the fellowship was everything and their whole lives were dedicated to doing everything right and following every rule.” I pause. “I didn't really know what a friend was until I met you."
Kneading the small of my back, he nods. “You were my first friend, too.”
“What? No way. You didn’t grow up sheltered like I did.”
“I wasn’t sheltered like you, no, but I was absolutely sheltered, babe. It was very different. And yeah, I have my brothers, but I was never able to measure up to them and I got damn sick of the comparisons.” He lifts his hands so they graze my sides, stroking me until I lean in a little closer. “You were the first person I ever opened up to.”
The first who ever saw his vulnerability. The first to know how utterly human he is.
The countless hours sitting on the craggy rocks that overlook the beach behind The Castle, the secret trysts we had in the woods that surrounded it, the nights he would come and secrete me away to catch a movie in Boston or go to a concert. Eden would flip if she knew. There were lots of things I could do with a boy several years older who had a license and money.
We have so many memories together, it’s hard to sort through them. Do they mean to him what they mean to me? Does he treasure them the way I do? Like precious keepsakes locked in a box, I pull them out and sift through them with leisurely nostalgia.
Does he remember the necklace he gave me and why? He hasn’t mentioned it.
But I know Timeo. Timeo doesn’t forget anything.
“Do you remember the time we got stuck in that corn maze?” I say with a laugh. I got it into my head that we all had to do all the fun fall things and make those family memories I never had the privilege to make before. So I dragged Timeo, Sergio, and Eden with me to pick apples, carve pumpkins, feast on apple cider donuts, and go on a rambling hayride at a farm north of Boston. One particular farm had a corn maze.
“Fuck,” he says with that grin that makes my heart squeeze in my chest. “That maze. Jesus, we were lost for hours, weren’t we?”
So lost, the sun set before we solved it, and Sergio called his crew to find us.
“Every row of corn looked like the next and when we finally got to what we thought was the end, we realized we were right back where we started from.”
“I think they did it on purpose, I swear they did,” he says seriously. “All that attention in the media.”
“I never could understand why Sergio got so mad at you,” I say, shaking my head. “I mean he can be scary, and I know it, but he was only ever like a brother to me, and I thought he had a sweet spot for you, but I swear to God if Eden hadn’t intervened, he would’ve disowned you.”
Timeo gives me a funny look. “You don’t know why? Seriously?”
I bite my lip and think about it. “I—” And then it hits me with the force of a two-by-four. I’d turned eighteen the day before. I was a legal adult, and the very first thing Timeo did with me was get lost for hours, alone, in a corn maze.
“He thought you — oh my God.” I stare at Timeo with wide eyes. “Eighteen-year-old me would’ve absolutely died of happiness, you know.”
Timeo flattens his palms on my back and hisses in a breath. “You don’t make it easy, Starla.”
I wriggle on his lap again, luxuriating in the control I have over him. “I don’t? Oh. I’m so sorry.” I bite my lip.
“Starla,” he groans, dropping his head back. “Jesus.”
I must confess I am quite enjoying myself.
I shift on his lap again and curl my hands around his shoulders. I move so close my sex is pressed to his hardness and my breasts to his chest.