Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 135831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
I need her too much to act on these desires. Need her to help fix the mess I made of my public life. I try to focus on the drive, the surroundings—anything but the way my pulse spikes just being near her.
It’s nearly ten. The city is still busy as we cruise toward North Beach, closer and closer to Everly’s home, passing smatterings of people walking along the sidewalk, dipping in and out of restaurants, bars and bookstores, chatting with each other.
We’re still not talking. I steal a glance at her, but that’s a rookie mistake. Now I’m thinking about how her legs look in that skirt. How the moonlight streams across her pale skin as she stares straight ahead out the window, quiet too. I’m picturing how she’d look in her home, dragging me inside, grabbing my shirt and telling me to shut her up with a kiss.
I nearly groan at the thought. Gripping the wheel tighter, I force out a safe question. “Want me to play some music?”
We’ve got all of a mile left, but I can’t stand the company of my own thoughts right now.
“Sure,” she says.
Without thinking, I stab the play button on the console to blast the car with the new playlist Wesley shared with me—Rock Tunes That Put You In A Winning Mood will do me some good right now.
“Economic forces played a role in the progress of navigation, and in this lesson we’ll explore—”
Fuck.
I hit end faster than I bat a puck out of the crease. I don’t want Everly to hear what I was listening to on the drive over to the restaurant earlier. It’s too personal.
She turns to me for the first time since she got in the car, tilting her head. “What’s that?” It’s asked with amusement.
“Just a class,” I mutter as the light ahead turns red. Great. My wish is finally granted when I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want her to know this about me.
“The class you’ve been taking?” she prompts. “You mentioned it in the weight room.”
Shit. I did. “Yeah. That’s the one.” Maybe the less I say, the more she’ll get the message.
Her mouth softens. “What’s it on? I was curious.”
“It’s on navigational tools,” I say.
And she’s not getting the message at all. She’s too interested in this detail about me since she asks, “Are you into cartography or something?”
I snap my gaze to her, my jaw ticking. “Are you going to use this somehow? In this image makeover?”
“No,” she says, almost offended. I expected her to sound annoyed, but she sounds…disappointed actually. “I was curious. About you, Max. I didn’t ask for any other reason.”
Shit. I swallow uncomfortably. But the whole topic is uncomfortable. “Sorry. I thought…”
I don’t finish since she knows what I thought—that I didn’t trust her with this information.
“Yeah. I know what you thought,” she says sadly, then turns her head subtly toward the window. Like she’s giving me space as she gazes into the inky night sky.
Do I want space? I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. No, that’s not true. I know what I want—her. But I know, too, it’s a bad idea to do a damn thing about that wish.
At least I can give her the truth though. I blow out a breath as I grip the wheel and I glance at the woman beside me, her face aglow with the lights of the city after dark.
“It’s an online class offered by a local university. I listen to it. Been taking this one since the start of the season. It’s selfish really. Why I take it,” I say.
“Why do you take it then?”
I picture my grandfather, the last few years of his life, but especially the last few months. How he wasn’t himself any more. He was a man without history, without a family, without memories. He was a shell of who he’d been. “My grandfather had dementia. It led to his death a year ago,” I say, and the light changes mercifully. Good. It’s easier to share this awful story when I don’t have to look at her. “I spent time with him whenever I could get to Seattle. Sometimes I took him to his appointments. One time, he was in pretty bad shape when I took him to his neurologist. And when he was with the nurse doing labs, I got a chance to be alone with the doctor. And I jumped on it,” I say, and I’m not entirely proud of this moment, but at the time, I was roiled with fear. I’d seen the future, and it was awful. I felt like I had to make it about me. “I selfishly asked if there was anything I could do to prevent dementia.”
“That’s not selfish,” she says, her voice strong and passionate. “That’s smart.”