Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Careful. Stop.
This is the second time I’ve met her. I’m supposed to have no idea who she is, yet it doesn’t feel that way at all.
“How do you know?” she says, trying for a joke. “Maybe I’m a secret bank robber or something.”
“Oh yeah?” I chuckle. “How do you pull that off?”
“It’s easy. I just walk in there and do my meanest face. I don’t need to say anything else.”
“Your meanest face?” I laugh again. “All right. Let’s see it.”
I glance at her, and she rises to the challenge, sticking her lips out in a pout and furrowing her eyebrows.
“You look more bratty than mean,” I tell her, smirking.
“Bratty?” Her laughter is so sweet, so welcome. “I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before.”
“First time for everything,” I say. “But I said you look it when you pull that face. You’re not bratty, Lucy.”
“You talk like you know me or something. Have you been stalking me?”
I grin, shaking my head, focusing on the road. I don’t tell her that stalking her is exactly what I’ve been fighting to resist ever since I met her at the community center.
I’ve wanted to find her apartment, to track her down, to be with her…But now we’re heading to her apartment, no stalking required.
“Do you have a roommate?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says, and I almost let out a sigh of relief.
A roommate means somebody will be there to stop me from acting on these desires.
Once I start with Lucy, I won’t be able to stop, but I don’t want her to think she’s just another woman…or that other women are part of it, part of us because they’re not and never will be.
But that would mean telling her….
You’re mine now and forever.
“But she’s out,” Lucy goes on, and my heart gives an urgent pulse. “Until around midnight, I think. She’s seeing a boy.”
“Ah,” I say.
It’s all I can say since everything else would involve crossing countless lines.
She’s going to be alone in her apartment.
“You don’t need to fill out the forms,” I say. “But we’ll need references and have to run a criminal background check, but that’s just standard procedure. I hope you’re not really a bank robber.”
“Are you sure that’s okay? I don’t mind going through the regular interview process.”
“I’m sure,” I tell her. “I’ve heard enough. Don’t worry. Your trainers will put you through the wringer. I’m not just giving you this job.”
“Good,” she says. “I know this might sound funny since, you know, the whole student loan thing…but I hate handouts. I hate that I’ve had to take loans to go to college.”
“I know the feeling,” I say. “We were dirt-poor growing up. I started working when I was eleven. I’ve always hated handouts too. But take it from somebody who knows, Lucy, sometimes the worst thing you can do is turn one down. Sometimes a handout is the difference between a long and successful career and wondering what could’ve been.”
“Has anybody ever told you you’re pretty freaking poetic for a football player?”
I chuckle. “I took a minor in English lit in college, mostly for the credits, but then I got obsessed, and it became a major the next year. The guys used to tease me about the books I read.”
“But you read them anyway.”
“Of course.” Coming to another red light, I glance at her, knowing now would be the best moment to kiss her…but only because every moment would. “I wouldn’t stop doing something I enjoyed because other people made fun of it. It’d set a bad example for….”
How the fuck am I still doing that after all these years, almost fifteen years of her being gone?
“For Anna,” Lucy finishes softly.
I nod, and she turns and faces the road, her hands clasped in her lap.
“I hope I have a daughter one day,” she says softly.
“You want kids?”
Calm, calm, calm down. NOW.
My instincts flare again at the revelation, roaring, demanding I make it happen right here. Pull over and find someplace private.
“Yes,” she says. “Do you…I mean more, one day?”
I didn’t, but then I met you.
“Maybe,” I tell her. “But I’d have to find the right woman.”
“Well…you’ve got plenty of options.”
I almost tell her, but then Bryce’s voice is in my head again, warning against it, reminding me of the charity.
I feel close to Lucy, closer than I have to any woman…ever, easily, no competition. As absurd as some people might find that, it’s the truth.
But I have to be sure. Completely certain, or I risk everything.
“No,” I say, “I haven’t.”
“Uh… have you seen the tabloids?”
“I never read those things. And anyway, the last person I’d want to marry is a Hollywood actress or a model.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve heard how they talk when nobody’s around, the casual way they reference cheating on their partners, the way they laugh as though nothing’s ever serious, nothing matters. I don’t know – it’s difficult to explain.”