Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
I snorted. “Kids are brutal.”
“You have no idea,” she muttered. “You’re putting up a lot of plastic.”
“Just trying to keep the dust to a minimum and save you from having to clean out your ducting system when I’m done,” I said, watching her.
She nodded, her face a little sad.
And I wondered if she knew how bad of a friend she had.
Between her friend and her ex, she could use a break.
Which had to be why I was blurting out what I did next.
“You want to go for a ride?” I asked, sensing her need for a distraction and running with it.
“Oh,” she paused. “Where?”
I grinned. “Somewhere that you probably don’t want to go…but it’s a nice, long ride. And I figure that it’ll give you time to clear your brain of whatever it is that you’re thinking.”
“I don’t know,” she bit her lip. “The thought of getting onto another bike…”
“I swear to God, I don’t drive like that prick,” I said. “I’ll stop if you want me to stop.”
She worried her lip with her teeth, then nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Honey is the tastiest of all insect vomits we have tried so far.
—Milena’s secret thoughts
MILENA
An hour earlier
The moment I turned my phone off of silent, it started ringing.
I stared at it like it was about to attack me when I saw the name on the screen.
I didn’t want to answer, but I did anyway.
“Hello?” I answered cautiously.
“I’m so sorry,” Hazel replied. “I completely forgot we were supposed to run today.”
My shoulders slumped just a little bit farther, and some of the anger I’d been holding loosened from my shoulder.
But not all. Definitely not all.
The last thing I wanted to do was hold a grudge against my best friend, but I was beginning to wonder if she was someone that maybe didn’t need me as much as I needed her.
While I’d been running, I thought about all the effort that I had to put into my friendships.
Why was I always the one that had to reach out? Why did I always have to make the plans? Why did I have to go and sign up for the marathon, pay Hazel’s portion of the ticket, and then book the vacation rental?
“It’s okay,” I lied.
“It’s not okay,” she disagreed with me. “I saw you running past us today and I just…” she paused, searching for the right words. “I guess that I’m just so caught up with work and the new friends I’m making that I’m putting you on the back burner. And that’s not very nice of me.”
She sounded so genuine in that moment, but I didn’t let my guard down.
“It’s okay,” I continued to lie.
She sighed. “It’s really not. I know it’s not. You know it’s not. Can we meet up for the next long run in a week?”
I noticed she didn’t try to meet any earlier.
“I can’t Saturday,” I said, puffing up my chest.
All this time, I’d given her my Saturdays because it was easier for her to run then. However, for me, it was much, much harder.
In fact, Saturdays were one of my busiest days because it was hard to find help that wanted to work on the weekends.
“Oh,” she said. “What about Friday then?”
I blinked, surprised that she’d offer to change the day for me.
“I can do that,” I said. “Early morning?”
“Yes,” she continued. “Early morning.”
After a few more awkward moments of back and forth, she hung up, and I was left standing in my hallway, dripping with sweat, and wondering whether I should’ve just said “not next week.”
I was an overthinker.
Like, seriously, I could overthink anything.
The waitress setting the glass down too hard? Yeah, she did that because she doesn’t like me, and what if she spit in it because she didn’t like the way I looked at her?
Asher hadn’t called or tried to make contact in a few days. What if he was scheming, finding a way to make my life a literal hell? What if he was in the process of a plan that would make me lose my business?
Take my new carpenter, for instance. Today, he asked for a key, and I just gave it to him. What if he stole my car out of my driveway? What if he didn’t really need the key at all? What if he just wanted access to my key ring and wanted into my place so that he could get into Maven’s bakery and steal…
I hurried into the shower on the rest of that thought, quickly washing off the dirt and sweat from my run.
The moment that I was out, I dressed in leggings and a white t-shirt, shoved my feet into shoes, and then hurried to the car.
I was halfway there before another thought occurred to me.
Cutter was an honest guy.
I’d seen that in just the few times that we’d met.