Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Those words had been shared with her by the one man she didn’t think she could take a chance on. She just didn’t know that he was right, or that he was going to be the one making her uncomfortable.
Nash Wilder Christopherson was the world’s golden boy.
For fifteen years, she watched Nash race from the safety of her phone. Every single race, PR event, ESPN interview—she was there for it. He was the one thing that kept her sane while having to live the life her father forced her to.
That was all he’d ever be to her, though. A face on the other side of the screen.
Until he showed up at her apartment complex, carried her sister down hundreds and hundreds of stairs during a fire, and changed her opinion of him.
Nash Christopherson was Mean. With a capital M. And he couldn’t stand her.
***
He thought he had everything under control. Then he met her.
Nash knew from the moment he saw Zip waiting in her apartment, looking panicked, that she was going to damage him. She was going to pull him in, chew him up, and spit him out.
What he didn’t know was just how much damage he could take.
Nearly a year passed as he tried and failed to stay away.
A full year of her smiles, her playful jabs, her teasing, her eyes on him.
Then he got news that changed his life, and she finally took matters into her own hands, forcing herself into his life and pretty much giving him everything he ever wanted.
Everything was great, until it wasn’t. Life smacked him hard, and when the dust settled, she was gone. The only sign that she was ever there was the cracked and bleeding heart, half beating inside his chest, that yearned to hold her one more time.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER 1
Have you ever hated someone so much that you can’t stand them? Because that’s me with you right now.
-Zip to Nash
ZIP
Hello.
Hello?
I looked around in my dream, trying to spy the person who was calling out greetings when they shouldn’t be.
A firm poke to my side came then, and I cursed as my dream world morphed into the real world.
Eww.
“Are you awake yet?”
I blinked after opening my eyes, flinching at the bright sunlight that went straight into my eyeballs, and cursed. “Oww!”
“Why are you sleeping in the parking lot?”
“I’m not in the parking lot. I’m in the flower bed,” I said. “And this is called ‘grounding.’”
“What is ‘grounding?’” the annoying voice asked.
I knew who the voice belonged to, of course.
Nash Christopherson.
“Grounding, and earthing, is also known as direct skin contact with the surface of the earth,” I answered.
“But why?” he continued.
“It enhances health and provides feelings of wellbeing,” I expounded. “It’s something I like to do when I get home from working out. Kind of like a great reset. Sometimes, people sleep outside to get maximal benefit.”
“You were sleeping. In a parking lot,” he pointed out.
“I’m in the flower bed on the side of the building, actually,” I grumbled. “And since we live in an apartment, this shit is all that I have.”
I finally blinked open my eyes and wished I hadn’t.
That’s because Nash’s beauty was freakin’ blinding. Even more blinding than the damn sun.
“You’re not worried about getting kidnapped?” he asked.
“No,” I grumbled.
“Why?” he asked.
I studied Nash for a few long seconds.
At six-foot-two and two hundred and twenty pounds, he was actually known as rather large for the NASCAR races he participated in. He had short, salt and pepper hair, bright amber eyes, and perfectly flawless skin.
And, according to the last Here! Magazine that he posed for, he had a belly full of abs that looked fake AF—that I knew weren’t Photoshopped in the least—that he spent more than two hours a day training.
Well, not necessarily only the abs. But all of him. He even did martial arts.
He was like a livewire of intensity, and looking at him now made my heart start to pound, even though I really didn’t want it to.
Not for that man.
“Why what?” I asked, trying to remember the topic of conversation.
But it was an inevitability when it came to Nash.
He knew how to press my buttons, even when I’d first met him.
A year ago, when we’d moved into this new, highly secure building that sucked all the life out of my soul, I learned there was only one other occupant in the building. But, at the time, Winston Cyrus, Crimson’s rich AF billionaire husband, wouldn’t tell me who he was.
But then, after a fire in a utility room a few floors below us, I finally met Nash because he was the man who carried my sister down hundreds of stairs because the elevator had been turned off due to safety precautions.
I’d followed—lagged—behind as I carried down her big ass wheelchair, and I vowed right then and there that I would become stronger.
Hence me lying in the flower bed outside the building mid-day.
I’d gotten back from my new gym around seven this morning, and since I was already pretty dirty—goddamn, did burpees and one-legged squats suck balls—I’d decided to go ahead and ground myself for my mental peace.
Only, it never really worked.
I wasn’t sure if the whole ‘grounding’ thing was a lie or not, but I was beginning to think that all these things I kept seeing on social media were complete bullshit.
But at this point, I was willing to do just about anything to control my anger at the world. Even pretend that grounding was working, when in fact all I was doing was taking a nap in the dirt.
But whatever.
“Are you even listening to me?” Nash asked, sounding unamused.
I saw no point in lying to the man. Especially since he knew when I lied.
Ugh. The man saw way too much when it came to me, and it was getting highly annoying.
I focused on him. “No.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously.
He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. “You’re going to get hurt, or worse, one of these days.”
“Because I’m lying out in a flower bed in a secured, gated area?” I asked somewhat skeptically.
That was one thing Winston made sure of. The entire place was damn near impenetrable.
See, Winston was a billionaire by day, and a vigilante by night.
He attracted a lot of crazy people in his line of work—saving innocent children from human trafficking—and it was his hope that by putting in all these security precautions, people wouldn’t bother his family.
Well, more accurately, his wife.
Crimson was Winston’s world, and he’d die before he allowed anything to happen to her again.
Meanwhile, he kept us around because he knew that it made Crimson happy.
Simi and Coffey and their twins had a place here. Along with Keene.