Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
It’s like he brings out my rawest emotions. He makes me feel things I’m not sure I’ve ever felt about anyone. Even now, I can’t resist him.
I wish I was smart enough to step away, but there isn’t an ounce of willpower in my body left to stop this.
I don’t know how long the kiss lasts, but the moment he steps back, setting me away, is cataclysmically clear. One second, I’m warm and wanton, and the next, my whole psyche is shattered.
Is he mad I slapped him? Is he aroused like me? Is he both?
My teeth sink into my lips, anguish and anger and violence my only saviors from the feel of his mouth burning on my skin. We’re both breathing heavy, practically panting, and I’m so insanely tempted to kiss him again I make myself sick.
“Get out of here, Norah,” he demands, his voice so rough it borders on cruel.
“Bennett—”
“Leave,” he snaps, finishing me off once and for all. I’m humiliated and freaking terrified of how far I let myself go. My control might as well cease to exist. I grab my grocery bag of milk and hurry down the sidewalk, back across the street toward my sister’s coffeeshop, with my heart in my throat.
My mind churns as quickly as my legs, but neither is effective at getting me away from the reality of what just happened.
Bennett Bishop and I just kissed.
The basket case and the beast…a match all but guaranteed to go down in flames.
The Runaway Bride
Norah
Sunday, July 25th
The sounds of chatter coming from inside the cathedral fill my ears, and my chest grows tighter with anxiety. I’m in my own nightmarish version of a horror movie, and any second, the villain is going to jump out and catch me.
Only, the villain isn’t some psychopath with a chainsaw—it’s the man I’m supposed to marry today. The man I’m currently running from.
My bridal purse and the envelope are clutched in one hand, and the train of my dress in the other as I move down one of the massive, marble hallways at the back of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, close to where the rooms that brides and grooms and wedding parties use to get ready. My red-soled, bridal Louboutins on my feet click-clack against the floor, causing a terrifying echo to bounce around inside my ears.
I need to get out of here before anyone sees me.
Voices sound in the distance, and I freeze, right in the middle of the hallway, and my head bounces around like a ping-pong ball, searching for something, anything to hide behind.
The voices are getting closer, and I find refuge in my second bathroom of the day. It only consists of one stall, and I lock the door the instant I click it shut.
My left hand clutches the porcelain sink, and I stare at my reflection in the mirror, my bridal purse and the envelope that just dropped a bomb on my entire existence still white-knuckled in my right hand.
“Get it together,” I whisper to myself. “You have to get it—”
Three soft knocks rattle the wood of the door, and my body practically jumps out of my disgustingly expensive cream silk-and-lace dress. I hold my breath.
“Norah? You in there?”
Instantly, I breathe again. It’s Lil, aka Lillian, my best friend, my maid of honor and the only person I actually like out of my wedding party. The only person I actually know out of my wedding party. The other nine bridesmaids are either Thomas’s family or Thomas’s friends’ wives or women I’ve met through Thomas’s social circle.
Because everything in your life has revolved around Thomas, my mind harshly whispers. Or what your mother wants, which is you being with Thomas.
Lillian has been by my side since I was a kid. She was the first friend I made when my mother moved us to New York, shortly after my father passed away, and the only girl at the Manhattan private school my mother enrolled me in that didn’t care whether or not my family had money—which, we didn’t.
Until my mother married my stepdad, Carlton, we lived in a studio apartment in Brooklyn and ate noodles five out of seven nights a week.
My mother’s new relationship changed everything, though, and we went from barely getting by to being surrounded by gilded molding inside ten-thousand square foot penthouses with marble floors and living rooms that looked more like museums than a cozy space where a family lived.
“Norah?” Lillian’s voice drops to a whisper, the tone harsh with panic. “You in there?”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“Are you okay? What are you doing?”
“Just…” I sigh and pause, because how do I tell my best friend that I’m currently in the middle of planning my escape route from my wedding?
“Just what?”
“Just...I don’t know...” Having a mental breakdown? I step up to the door and let my forehead hit the wood with a thud. “Are you alone?”