Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 65192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
“Agreed. If we hurry, we can light them up in the firepit in my parents’ backyard before Dad gets home from the hospital.”
“Or we could make out in your old bedroom and worry about the khakis later.”
She laughs, her sweet breath feathering over my lips. I’m about to kiss her—who cares about the people streaming off the train—when she pulls back to ask, “So I guess you’re not heading back to the city, after all?”
“Nope. I’m with you until you kick me out and tell me you need your space.”
“And if I never kick you out?” she asks, the fear creeping into her gaze making me think she means it. And that she feels it—how big this is, how this could be the start of a whole new life. For both of us.
“Then I’m just…with you,” I say.
“And I’m with you,” she echoes, and then she kisses me again and everything is right. Finally, completely right.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jess
I don’t remember much about the drive to my parents’ place, only that the Uber driver had one of those air fresheners that’s shaped like a cactus but smells like laundry detergent hanging from his rearview mirror and that Sam’s hand rested possessively on my thigh, making me think filthy thoughts about all the other places I was dying for him to touch me.
And then Dad texted to say that Mom was doing great, Vicky was still in labor, and he’d be home in about an hour with burritos.
An hour…
As Sam and I close the front door behind us, toe off our shoes by the shoe cubby, and creep quietly by Isabelle’s kennel—where the ferret who hates everyone but Mom is napping peacefully—all I can think about is how much trouble we could get into in an hour.
Good trouble.
The best trouble in the whole world.
“Permission to throw you over my shoulder and drag you to the bedroom caveman-style?” Sam asks in the darkened living room, making my stomach flip again.
“The ceilings are too short and you’re too tall,” I tell him as I grab a fistful of his dress shirt, nerves zinging as my fingers brush the hard muscle beneath. “But I’ll race you. Last one to my Super Mario bed is a rotten egg.”
I take off, giggling like a spazz as Sam chases me through the living room and down the dimly lit hallway to the last room on the left. Inside, I leap onto my ancient, Mario and Luigi bedspread, the one that was “vintage” when I bought it and is probably a bona fide antique by now. Sam slams the door behind him and reaches for the top of his shirt, making quick work of the buttons as he crosses to the bed. “Remember when we were kids, and your mom would pop in every few minutes to make sure the door was still open, and we weren’t making you a teen mom?”
I grin as I watch him undress, feeling a sudden kinship with that coyote on the old cartoons, the one who was always drooling over the roadrunner he wanted to have for dinner. I obviously don’t want to literally eat Sam, but this hunger rising inside of me brings words like “starving” and “ravenous” to mind.
I’ve been starved for this man for what feels like my entire life, and now I want to devour him, every delicious inch of his gorgeous bod from head to knee (because toes are gross, even the toes of people you love).
Love…
My heart jerks, but the jolt of surprise is followed quickly by a wave of warmth and a sweet certainty that swells in my chest.
Of course, I love Sam. I’ve always loved Sam. The wanting to trace his abs with my tongue is new, but this kinship I feel with him has been there from the day we met as kids. One look into his big brown eyes that first day at coding camp and I knew I’d met a friend for life.
Sometimes you just know.
I still can’t believe it took all this time for me to realize I’m attracted to him, too, but maybe I just wasn’t ready before. Maybe I was too young and focused on growing up and getting out of small-town New Jersey to see the stone-cold fox right in front of my face. Or maybe some wise part of my heart realized that this thing with Sam would be too intense and real and all-consuming for teenage me.
But adult me isn’t scared anymore. I’m ready to take the next step with the incredible man who loves me, this man who’s already promised to stay in the States if that’s what I want because I’m his top priority.
“I’m feeling very lucky right now,” I whisper as he strips off his dress shirt and tosses it to the floor. My eyes widen at the sight of the muscles beneath the tight white tee beneath. “Wow,” I breathe. “Your chest is amazeballs. Like, truly a thing of epic man beauty.”