Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
“Geez, Avery. Don’t be so vulgar.”
“Oh, screw you. What in the world were you thinking? Especially after yesterday.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What was I thinking by getting an ice cream cone with my friend? Uh, nothing, other than I wanted ice cream.”
“But you just had to lick hers, huh? In town, knowing how these people gossip. You don’t even share ice cream cones with me.”
“You don’t like rocky road,” he calmly replied.
I stared at him and silently prayed I wouldn’t go to prison that evening for killing my fiancé. I’d seen enough episodes of Snapped before. I knew it just took one little thing to push women over the edge.
Apparently, mine was rocky road ice cream.
I took a deep breath as I closed my eyes. I quietly counted to ten before releasing the breath and reopening my eyes. “The whole town’s coming to our wedding in two weeks. And now people are gossiping about seeing you with another woman, licking ice cream cones together. Do you understand how embarrassing that is for me? How stupid that makes me look?”
He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t mean for the day to go as it did. I went to get my car from work, and Drew was there talking to my boss. The repair center with my car called and said they’d have to keep it until tomorrow. Drew then started saying she’d drive me home again, but I had to go get groceries to cook dinner for you. So she took me, and there just so happened to be an ice cream shop. It was nothing serious, but I understand your frustration.”
“Do you, though? Because it seems to me that you think I’m overreacting.”
“Well, it’s a known fact that women are a bit more emotional than men. Studies show—”
“Oh, screw your studies, Wesley!” I barked. “You’ve been weird for the past few months. Ever since that woman came to visit.”
“Are you jealous of Drew or something?”
“Jealous?! Of Drew?!”
Yes.
I was.
Completely.
Wholeheartedly.
Yet still, he couldn’t see me. Not the real, hurting me that was.
He dropped his head and put up surrendering hands. “Okay, you’re not jealous of Drew.”
I sighed. “Listen, if you don’t want to do this wedding thing—”
“Whoa.” He shot to his feet and headed over to me. “Slow down. What are you talking about? I want to do this marriage thing, Avery. And sure, I’ve been a bit off lately, but there’s been so much going on with work. Plus, I understand that Drew has been a lot for you to take in, and I accept all my faults with how this came to be. I should’ve told you she was a woman and—”
“And that she licked your ice cream cone,” I added.
He smirked slightly. “And that she licked my ice cream cone,” he added. “But I was only having her help me cook your dinner because she loves to cook. I hate it. I wanted my apology meal to be amazing for you.”
I arched an eyebrow and glanced over at the table set with a fancy-looking dinner. “You cooked me dinner to apologize?”
“Yes.”
“With her?”
He swallowed hard, knowing this was going nowhere good. “Uh-huh.”
I walked over to the plates of food. Fancy steaks with a compound butter and some cooked pork belly and peas.
I hated peas.
I glanced at Wesley, then toward the dinner, then back at him.
A big part of me wanted to ruin the whole meal. I wanted to throw the steaks against the wall and smear the butter in his face. What was he doing? Why was he working so hard to ruin what we had? We were supposed to be stable with one another. We were supposed to make sense. Sure, we weren’t romantic, but we were supposed to be a team.
This wasn’t teammate behavior. If anything, it was as if he’d benched me and I’d been replaced by another woman fourteen days before our wedding.
“I’m going to bed,” I murmured, feeling slightly too exhausted and hurt to deal with any more interactions with him. All I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and stay there for the next few weeks.
11
AVERY
The next twelve days sped by faster than I was ready for them to move.
The air was thick with the scent of freshly mown grass and the lingering warmth of the sun. It was a much warmer start to spring than we were used to in Illinois, but I wasn’t complaining. After the weekend, April was upon us, and I was thankful for more sunny days than snowy ones. The temps were even in the sixties, which seemed remarkable.
The guys threw me a pre-wedding celebration after our Thursday game. Although we didn’t win the series that week, we came damn close to doing so, and the energy of the group was growing more and more each week. More students also attended the games to watch the team play. I had no doubt that we could pull out a win over the next few weeks with how the team performed.