Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
When JR glances at me over the needle and thread, his expression abstruse, I twist my lips, acting unimpressed about how faultlessly he threads the cotton through the needle’s eye.
It’s all for show. Just the seamless way he stitched me up the first time around reveals he knows what he’s doing. I’m just not known for praising people who confuse me as much as they fascinate me.
JR’s appearance is extremely rough, but when you exclude his grunting and remember how he kept me alive for three days, he doesn’t seem nearly as daunting. He pulled me out of a dangerous wreck, kept me alive during a medically challenging concussion, and is so in touch with his femininity, he knows when a woman needs space.
He only approached me once while I was sitting at the window for the past three hours and that was to hand me the banana.
The remembrance of his nurturing way does little to settle the nerves fluttering in my stomach when he careens the needle toward my foot, though.
“I really don’t think this is a good idea. I can’t tolerate pain. I’m a wimp.” This is proven without a doubt when he rips the suturing needle through my unnumbed skin in the middle of my wound. “Ouuccchhh!”
With his facial expression hidden by his scruffy beard and angled head, JR nudges the bottle of alcohol to my half of the table with his elbow before he returns his eyes to a wound in need of over a dozen stitches.
“Can you at least wait until I’m tipsy before you torture me?” I plead before snatching up the bottle and downing two generous mouthfuls. “Sweet lord.” I cough through the burn stretching from the back of my throat to my stomach. “What the hell is that? Unvented isopropyl? It tastes like pure alcohol.”
It’s hard to see JR’s mouth through his thick beard, but I swear his lips are itching to furl into a grin. His twinkling eyes give away his smile even more than his mouth.
“You won’t be laughing when I hurl on your fur rug. As far as I am aware, I haven’t eaten today, and we all know what happens when a once-a-year socialite drinks on an empty stomach.”
It dawns on me that JR has more personality than his outer shell lets on when he tosses the banana I refused earlier into my lap. After arching a brow as if to say, there’s your solution, he returns his focus to my foot he’s only just started to suture.
Although his next three stitches are nowhere near as painful as the first two, I swallow numerous mouthfuls of the mentholated spirit-inspired drink over the next twenty minutes.
It hits my head faster than the bottle of bourbon I borrowed from my parents’ liquor cabinet when I was sixteen and makes my words slur when I stammer out, “Do you think Cedric ever loved me? Or was it just about the sex?”
I balk more than JR.
Cedric and I didn’t have sex. He hung around long enough for me to give in to his groveling, then the actual deed from beginning to end lasted five minutes maximum. Cedric said foreplay was not his forte.
Needing to wash down the bile his endless lies instigate before I add to the mess in JR’s beard, I chug down another generous helping of the murky dark liquid.
Regretfully, it increases the nonsense spilling from my mouth instead of ending it. “I guess some people will say I’m to blame for him straying.” I swallow an extra generous mouthful of liquid courage to ease out my next confession. “If I had kept him satisfied, he wouldn’t have looked elsewhere. That’s what his mom will start her argument with.” I groan. “Hell, my mom may even start with that. She’s all about women keeping their men happy.” I lock my eyes with JR’s that are darting between my ankle and my face. “Do you know that I’m the only member on my mother’s side over the age of thirty who isn’t married?” I gasp like I just found out Cedric and I are related by blood. “The horror.”
My focus shifts from seeking the slightest glimpse of JR’s smile to the bottle in my hand when a weird clicking noise gains my attention.
The liquor I’m downing like water almost resurfaces when I learn the reason for the noise. My engagement ring is clinking against the neck of the half-empty bottle.
The memento that was meant to signify my importance in Cedric’s life pains me more than JR undertaking a minor surgical procedure on my foot without anesthetic, and my drunken head is adamant it must be immediately dealt with.
“Here, hold this.” Alcohol sloshes onto the floor when my attempt to thrust the bottle into JR’s chest is thwarted by my woozy head seeing him twice. One is a mirage compliments to my tipsy head, and the other is real, but I have no clue which is which.