Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“Truffles?” She asks enthusiastically even though she knows the answer. I watch her pull one out and take a bite. Expensive chocolate is supposed to be savored, but according to Em, the faster you chew it up the better it tastes. Women. I’ve never even tried to understand one.
“Khloe was looking for you earlier,” she says around a mouthful of chocolate.
I remain silent, unsure if I even want to open the door to the whole Khloe situation with Em. Out of everyone in my life, I know that Em would be the best one to talk to, but if I begin, it gives the situation more power than I have the energy for right now.
“She didn’t seem too happy to see Snap in your shirt this morning at breakfast.”
Fuck. Talk about a kick in the nuts.
I scrub my hands roughly over my face, still finding it weird to have hair growing on my face. The door I didn’t even want to crack open has just been blown off its hinges with Emmalyn’s statement.
“I should’ve woken her up and made her leave before I left.”
“Why would you hide the fact that you slept with Snapper from Khloe? Are you ashamed?” Emmalyn raises an eyebrow at me, waiting for an answer I’m not one hundred percent certain of.
“Seems that way,” I answer honestly. Ashamed. Disappointed in myself. I have no idea where this self-recrimination is coming from, but I know I don’t like how it feels sitting in my gut. “It’s a new feeling for me.”
“She’s very young,” Emmalyn says stating the obvious.
“She’ll be eighteen in a month, and it’s only a six-year difference between her and me. That’s not all that bad,” I correct defensively.
“Twenty-eight days.” I look at her confused. “She told Diego this morning that she’s eighteen in twenty-eight days.”
“I hate that I wasn’t here to introduce you guys.”
“No big deal,” she says with a shrug. “She seems like a nice girl.”
I cringe at the word girl. It’s the same word Emmalyn would’ve used for a twenty-five-year-old, so I know she doesn’t mean anything by it, but still… girl makes my stomach turn.
We sit in silence for a while. She’s staring at me, probably using some sort of mind tricks to get me to open up and spill my guts. I’m fighting nausea and the urge to get back on my bike and not come back for a month.
“You like her,” Em says softly.
I smile. “I mean, what’s not to like? She’s beautiful.” Em nods in agreement. “She’s had a shitty hand dealt to her but at the same time, she seems strong to me.”
“She’s a tortured soul, and you have a hero complex,” she adds.
“Well, fuck, Emmalyn. Just say what you really think.”
She laughs, and even confused about what to do next, the sound makes me smile. Emmalyn just has a way about her that brings out the best in everyone else.
“I’m just telling it like it is. Every one of you Devil Dogs has a hero complex. I’m thankful for Diego’s every single second of my life. I know without you guys that I’d be dead by now. Diego saved me from Bobby. You kept Khloe from jumping off the bridge. I know how territorial he was over me. Is that how you feel about Khloe?”
I let her question sink in for a moment. “I won’t touch her before her birthday.” I seem more fixated on the fact that she’s only seventeen more than anyone else.
“You need to make up your mind what you want,” she says gently as if she’s breaking terrible news to me. “Messing with the other girls in the house while waiting for her to turn eighteen isn’t going to fly. It’s wrong, and you know that as much as I do.”
“I don’t even know if she’s interested in me like that.” This is a different situation for me.
Most of my interactions with women go like my run-in with Snapper did in the hall last night. Feelings aren’t involved unless you count the tingle deep in my sack before I blow. That has always been the totality of ‘feelings’ I’ve had for any one woman before in my life.
Not one single time in my life have I gone to bed with a woman wondering what tomorrow would be like if we woke up late and had brunch someplace. I’m not saying that I treat women poorly, because I don’t. They all know I’m not looking for anything more than a good time. I’m very upfront about it; I always have been. That doesn’t mean that, on occasion, I misread one, and she gets a little huffy in the morning when I don’t hand over my phone number or promise to see her again. I hate that it happens, but at the end of the day, she shouldn’t have lied.