Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
I was overthinking everything even though things with Nova were fucking fine. For the past two days she’d texted me on her way to work just like always and there was nothing in the texts that were anything out of the ordinary. I hadn’t been able to stop by the pancake house like I usually did on Sundays, but she hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other if I’d shown up. Our friendship didn’t seem to have changed at all, and I was fucking thrilled.
Mostly thrilled.
No, entirely thrilled.
Fuck.
“Hey, Prospect,” Nova’s pop Samson said, lifting his chin in my direction.
I startled like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Jumpy today, huh?” he joked as he passed me. “You been doin’ somethin’ you’re not supposed to?”
“Always,” I replied easily.
Shit, if he only knew.
Back when we were teenagers, Samson had given me the talk. I’d been kind of anticipating it, but it hadn’t gone how I’d expected. Instead of telling me to keep my grubby hands off his granddaughter, he’d said something different—that if I wasn’t in love with her, if I didn’t see a life with her, to keep things simple. He’d warned me that if I broke her heart he’d bury me and at the time I’d been so confused about the whole thing that I’d just agreed with everything he’d said. I guess that had been his version of keep your hands to yourself because he must’ve known that it would be easy for me and Nova to go down a different road, and he’d asked me to be sure before we did.
If he knew the thoughts that had been going through my head since I’d woken up Saturday morning, I had a feeling he’d be picking out a spot to dig.
The rest of the day pretty much followed the same course. I changed oil and air filters while amusing everyone with my foul mood.
I could admit that I didn’t have bad days very often, so the fact that I was obviously being pissy must’ve been pretty hilarious for the boys to witness. They didn’t expect that the bad mood would lead to any actual problems, so they were comfortable teasing the shit out of me about it—which only made it worse.
“You goin’ home to scream into your pillow?” my uncle Will asked, his lips twitching. “You show it who’s boss.”
“Fuck off,” I muttered, ducking when he swung halfheartedly at the side of my head.
“Seriously,” he said, stopping a few feet away. “You good?”
“I’m fine.”
“Alright.”
“Call your mother,” my dad yelled from one of the garage bays. “I told her you were havin’ a hard day.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yep.”
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because I wanted to see just how pissed off you could get,” he joked, disappearing back into the garage.
I clenched my hands into fists as I walked toward my truck. I really wished I could’ve taken my bike to work, but it was broken down again and I hadn’t had a chance to figure out what the fuck was going on. Between fixing shit on the house that needed to be done and working full time I hadn’t had any spare time to work on it. It was my own fault for thinking that rebuilding a vintage Harley was a better idea than buying a new one. I was pretty sure the boys at the club were laughing at me. A prospect that couldn’t keep his bike running was a fucking joke.
I climbed in my truck and called my mom right away so I could get it over with. She was one of my favorite people on the entire earth, but if anyone was going to figure out what was going on in my head, it would be her and I didn’t want her to know shit.
“Hey, Ma,” I said when she answered. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Rumi, my sweet happy boy—”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Dad says you’re in a shitty mood. What’s up?”
“You don’t think it’s weird that Dad calls you to tattle when he’s at work?”
“He wasn’t tattling and I called him.”
“I’m fine, Ma.”
“Yeah, sounds like it,” she replied sarcastically.
“Not sure why everyone else can be in a bad mood, but the minute I am, everyone’s up my ass.”
“Who’s up your ass, honey?” she asked with mock concern. “Mama will pull them right out of there.”
I couldn’t help it. Even though I was in a piss poor mood, I laughed.
“You’re a fuckin’ nutcase.”
“Everything good, son?”
“Everythin’ is fine,” I said for the fortieth time that day. “Just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“Well hell,” she said with a laugh. “Sleep in the middle then.”
“I’ll try that.”
“You’re just easy going,” she said with a smile in her voice. “So when you’re stomping around like the world has shit in your cereal, it’s weird.”