Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Until today.
When my defenses are low and I’m pissed and she’s desecrating my kitchen and my dick still wants her.
My dick should be glad for what she’s doing in here.
Makes her far less attractive.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Arm hurts.”
“Trevor! Of course it does. You had major surgery and physical therapy is hard. Did you get any painkillers at the clinic? Can I—”
“Why do you do that?” I spin, make my shoulder twitch, and barely stifle a grimace of pain as I readjust the ice pack. “Why do you make excuses for people who are assholes to you?”
Her blue eyes widen until they’re practically round. Her lips part, and her pink tongue darts out to swipe them before she visibly swallows. “You’re not being an asshole to me.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re cranky, but I would be too if I were you.”
And now I’m swallowing. Hard.
She thinks my attitude is all about my damn shoulder giving out and ending my baseball career. About spending my last year demoted to the minors and spending half of that in rehab. About knowing it was the Fireballs ownership taking pity on me and letting me decide for myself when I was done instead of forcing me out of my contract, and then, when they called me up to give me a ceremonial role in the final World Series games, I completely and totally blew my shoulder out on the very last pitch.
I got my ring.
Barely feel like I earned it.
And I ended my career, no ifs, ands, or buts about it this time.
She’s not wrong.
The end of my baseball career has me inside out and upside down and pissy and lost. I don’t like being upside down and pissy and lost, but it’s where I’m at.
And the worst part?
She’s so very, very far from all of what’s wrong with me today.
“Christmas sucks.” I manage to not snarl it, but just barely. Normal Christmas? Annoying. This Christmas? It’s hell.
I have an off-limits woman living in my house, Christmas-ing it up, my career is over, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do with the rest of my life. “Clean up when you’re done and try to keep it contained when I’m here.”
She blinks twice, and this time, there’s no patient, make-excuses-for-him Meg coming up with an instant answer.
This time, there’s hurt.
Fuck.
I make another grunting noise and turn to head to my room again.
She doesn’t speak.
She doesn’t follow me.
The oven timer goes off, but I notice she turns down the Christmas music before she shuts off the beeping.
I shove away the guilt building at knowing I’ve just lobbed a flaming shitball at an otherwise happy and easy houseguest, and I stride as fast as I can go down the hall to my bedroom, which also smells like pine trees and sugar cookies.
It’s all tinged with bad childhood memories made worse by the pissy mood I’ve been in for the past six weeks.
Meg’s right.
I need painkillers.
Preferably the kind that’ll put me in a stupor until mid-January.
Shouldn’t have stopped at the ice pack in the kitchen.
I should’ve grabbed the whiskey too.
MEG O’CONNELL, AKA A NORMALLY CHEERFUL SOUL TRYING HARD TO NOT LET THE SADNESS TAKE OVER THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
I’m streaming Elf on my laptop with my headphones on in the dark on the couch in the living room, mindlessly crocheting a baby blanket for the Berger quadruplets. I’m also wishing my brother wasn’t spending the holidays exploring the Australian Outback and my parents weren’t on a six-month retirement cruise around the world, no matter how happy I am for them to have these opportunities.
And now I’m freezing as I sense movement by the kitchen.
Trevor’s out of his room.
For the most part, he’s been really great. And I see him so little and make such an effort to always clean up after myself outside of my room that I was hoping I wasn’t being an inconvenient houseguest.
Especially since he’s always been one of my favorites of my brother’s friends.
Clearly, I was wrong.
I’m debating if I should pause my movie and say something to him, or sit here in the dark with my face illuminated by my laptop screen.
Dark.
Definitely sit here in the dark.
Be invisible.
Don’t think about how many times over the years that he’s shown up at random family events, where he would inevitably smile at me and listen after he asks how I’m doing or offer to let me go first in food lines at picnics or pick me for his dodgeball team even if I’m the world’s worst player.
Now, I hope he goes into the kitchen and tries a cookie and decides it’s the most delicious thing he’s had in his entire life, and that it makes his shoulder not hurt and his grumpies go away and then that he sits down next to me, casually loops an arm around my shoulders—his good arm, I mean—and asks if I want to go get a Christmas tree.