Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 111685 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111685 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Please. I was trying to convey to Stone. Please don’t say anything.
I didn’t want to see their pity. I didn’t want to be treated with kid gloves, or worse, with extra cruelty. I just wanted the status quo to remain. Those blogs hadn’t found out about my dad and Gail. They only talked about my car accident.
His jaw clenched, but he drew to a halt next to me. He stepped in, so my shoulder was brushing against his chest, but he didn’t touch me otherwise. He was just there if I needed him.
“Oh, good. That’s good, right? So you think you’ll stick around?” It was one of the guys talking. His eyes were more on Stone, but his question was directed at me.
Stone shifted back, taking point behind me.
It was now all on me to steer the rest of the conversation.
It was a move he did when we were kids. I’d forgotten about that, and the memory almost brought tears to my eyes. Another sense of familiarity, and I was starting to cling to every moment of those.
“Will you?” That was from Savannah.
“Uh.” I couldn’t stay at Stone’s forever, and I’d come to Texas for a reason. And I’d have to see about Jared, but was I a horrible person for wanting to stay? Wanting to keep going with my studies?
I didn’t know.
“I’m not sure, but I’d like to hold onto to the room until I know for sure?”
“Of course.” Nicole reached forward, squeezing my hand. “All semester. That was the original deal, and we can see later what you’re thinking, too.” She was looking from me to Stone, a slight gleam there, and it hit me then.
She thought Stone and I were together together.
“Oh—OH!” I stiffened, jackknifing away from Stone. “He and I, we’re not like that. No. No way.”
Stone started laughing behind me.
Nicole was frowning.
The guys mostly had blank expressions on their face.
Had I been wrong?
Nicole clarified, “No. I know. I was just letting you know the room is still considered yours.”
“Wanna come in and have a beer?” That was from Wyatt.
Stone looked at me, waiting.
“I need to get things from my room.”
I started to push through the crowd until I felt Stone’s hand on my shoulder. “I’ll come with, make sure you don’t pass out on the stairs or something.”
I glared at him. “I’m not that bad.”
“Last seventy-two hours begs to differ. Don’t know if you’ll come back from the room with a kid in tow.”
I shot him another glare, huffing and pushing forward.
Stone was half-guiding me, but he didn’t need to do that either.
Once inside, I said over my shoulder, “You know I actually lived here. I know how to get through the house. You don’t have to ‘guide.’” And I stepped left into a hallway, when I should’ve gone through the kitchen.
I paused. Cursed. And backtracked.
Stone started laughing again. “You were saying?”
“Shut up. Concussion, remember?” I hissed right as the guys were all coming in behind us.
Stone threw them an easy grin. “Don’t mind us. Apparently, Dust knows exactly where she’s going, but just in case we take another wrong turn, how do you get to the basement again?” He poked me. “You know how to get to your room once we get down those stairs, right?”
“I said shut up!”
I swung through the kitchen, wrenching open the door, and huffed all the way to the basement until it hit me what he’d done. He was needling me, knowing I’d get mad, and then I’d forget all the extra stuff I felt around those guys. Insecure. Doubt. Self-conscious. Embarrassed. That was the general smorgasbord of emotions for me.
He waited until we were in the game room and I was opening my door before he asked, “Those two always so welcoming to you?”
I breathed easier at the sight of my bed. My blanket. My books, not just my textbooks which most were at Stone’s. The rest of my clothes. My shower caddy.
My picture frames…
“Holy shit. You have this?” Stone was pulling out the yearbook I stashed.
“No. Don’t—”
But he was already opening it, falling to my bed. “Wow. This was your senior year?”
I knew what page it was on.
And I knew it, but I couldn’t stop him, and a part of me didn’t want to. A part of me needed one more person to read what was written on the very back page, the one page I kept just for her.
Going through the entire book, he laughed, smiled, cursed. He was shaking his head at some points. “Man. I remember those guys from football. I always thought they were dicks.”
Funny. He was pointing to the guys he had partied with his last year, the same guys who went on to ‘rule the school’ after he and his friends left. The same guys who idolized him because he was ‘making it big.’