Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
But there are more negatives too.
And it’s all playing with my head. Plus, our dads. Enough said.
I’m nuttier right now than a squirrel with a big old pile of nuts. Which, ha freaking ha, is exceptionally nutty.
Unfortunately for me, Apollo gets his begging face on—big eyes and everything. They might be kind of absurd, but then, what about this isn’t?
“You can’t make up for all those years with a single surprise,” I grouch. It’s easier to be grouchy and snappy than it is to let my hurt leach out all over the place or melt into a puddle of goopy-goo, which for some reason, I really want to do.
He doesn’t stare blankly at me when he replies, “I know.”
“Do you?”
His mouth parts, and he nods his head. He’s got his dead serious face on right now. “Yes, I know.”
“Because if that’s what you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.”
“Okay.”
God, I wish he could stop being so nice all the time. It’s really making me hot in all the wrong places. Again. I hate that when I’m around him, my body goes haywire. He brings out the inner cavewoman in my hormones. Not cool. I don’t want to comment on what he does to my panties, but if they vanish in a burning ball of fire, it’s not my fault.
His smile is enough to light up the entire room. Who needs light bulbs? Who needs solar? This man is the sun. Damn it, he’s always been the sun. It would just be so much easier if he weren’t. If he was mean, if he left us to our fate, and if he didn’t have the coolest house, the cutest skunk, and the softest heart. It would be so much easier if he didn’t act like his life goal was to make the world a vastly better place. And if he didn’t act like he wanted to make my life vastly better.
It makes me want to snarl. My guard comes right back up. He can’t possibly not want something. No one does something nice just for the sake of doing it, and if they do, well, I can’t say I’ve ever experienced it.
I step forward and point an angry finger in Apollo’s direction. I have to stop my forward motion since he doesn’t step back, and I’m afraid of what touching him would do to me. Panties going poof would probably be the least of it.
That doesn’t piss me off as much as it used to when I first got here, which is a huge red flag. “You have no idea what it was like when you left. I never had another best friend. I was this unmoored kid who was just…the girl without a mom. The girl with the funny dad. The girl who didn’t fit in and didn’t belong to anyone or anywhere. Do you have any idea how lonely that was? What’s wrong with you that you never called me or wrote me or freaking got online and sent me a message? It was there. It was always there. And you never used it. You just went off and lived a better life and left me to it.
“High school is a special kind of hell for everyone who has to go through it, but for me, it was ten times worse. I wasn’t the popular kid, the strange kid, or the athletic kid. I wasn’t the brainy kid, the good girl, the anything. I was basically nothing. No one cared to get to know me, so I was just invisible. And I was so fucking alone. I could have done better, made more of an effort, got over my shyness, and participated in more shit. I could have, but I didn’t. I missed my mom, I missed having a whole family, and I missed you. Some days, it was crippling. Even my dad barely saw me. He was so consumed with work most days, even before he started his own company, and then, when he did, he lived and breathed it. He did the best he could, but if you…if you were there, I swear things would have been fractionally better, and it would have been bearable.”
I know I’m scowling. I know I’m glaring. I know if I don’t have this mask of sheer anger on my face right now, I’m going to get the scrunchy face look, and then I’m going to start bawling.
I think scowling works a lot like smiling. If you scowl, then you feel all dark and broody. There is no room in my life for anything except that. No room for making it up to me. No room for softening and tenderness. And no room for letting my guard down, only to be smashed to pieces again. There is no room for trust that has been broken over and over again.