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)
I have to hesitate. I have to stop this before it starts because she has to know the truth—the entirety of it. I tried to tell her already but then mucked it all up. I have to be clear now because she matters too much to me to give her anything less. “If we do this, I don’t want to just be…that one-night person. I’d rather not do this than do it and have you never want to do it again.”
“Ahh. You want to be the person who wrecks me for anyone else ever again because it’s so good with you that I’ll never not want it with you.” She narrows her eyes at me. “That’s a mighty high opinion of your skillset.”
“No. I want to be the one who does this with you now and in the future because you choose to do it again and again. I want to be the one to please you. I want this to mean something. I don’t just want to be that one summer night’s fuck in a treehouse because the treehouse is amazing, and you’re feeling sentimental or just horny. I don’t want to do this for the sake of just doing this. I want it to mean something.”
“Um, said no guy ever,” she says with a laugh.
“I think lots of guys think this way. We’re just afraid to say so.”
Her eyes soften, and the rest of her follows. “I’m choosing to do this with you because it means something more to me already. I don’t want anyone else. I was just kidding about your skills. You have nothing to prove to me. I already know that, with you, it would be good. Probably nearly perfect. I know that after you, that will probably be it for me. I know what I’m signing up for. I can’t promise it will last forever, though, because who can?”
“Dreamers. Forever can be a thing.”
“It just takes work, right? But what if work isn’t enough? What if dreaming isn’t enough? What if love isn’t enough? People get divorced. They promise each other forever, and then they leave, and one gets a restraining order and doesn’t tell their daughter, and it makes her think she’s been abandoned and…sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about such baggage. I just…I can’t promise something I don’t believe in, and I don’t believe in forever.”
She gives me such a sad, destroyed look that I’m finished. She’s half-naked in front of me, and I’m not focused on that. I’m focused on how she has been feeling. How she feels right now. How afraid of the future she is.
“People also die,” I say carefully. “I understand promises only go so far, and people can only do so much. Also, sometimes, things don’t work out. The best we can ever give is a hundred percent on any given day, and sometimes we can’t even give that because we’re human. I’m not expecting miracles. I just don’t want to be a one-night deal.”
She pulls a face like she just stepped in a pile of doo and sunk down knee-deep. “If you knew me at all, you would never think that about me,” she says with a frown.
“I do know you. And I don’t think that about you. I just want to be upfront about what I want so no one gets offended, no one gets hurt, and our hearts stay intact. I think we’ve both had enough confusion and hurt to last a good long time.”
“Yes. We both have. I thought you’d know from what I said before that this is the last thing I’d do with you if I didn’t mean it. I promise to try, I promise to keep an open mind, and I promise to stay. It’s not a test. I just don’t know if we’ll work. I’m going on faith and how I feel right now, and I promise that the fact that my vagina has wanted you from the very start isn’t skewing my opinion. If you don’t want to do this now, we don’t have to. Sex isn’t a tool, and it should never be used like that by anyone. Me or you.”
“Dear god, I’ve really bungled this up, haven’t I?” I sigh.
“No.” She strokes my jaw, and I can feel the genuine affection in her touch before I even see it mirrored in her expression. “No, dear. I still want you just as much. I’m wet and throbbing for you, and I feel like I’ll die if you don’t fix that for me, but I can wait. I can keep dying a little. I’d rather go into the house and take care of myself right now than ever hurt you.”
“You won’t. You haven’t,” I say reassuringly.
“Even if, in the end, this doesn’t work out?”
“If, in the end, it doesn’t work after we’ve both tried our hardest, that’s just how life sometimes goes. I promise I will never hate you. I promise I will never have regrets. I promise that I will live to fulfill both those promises each day.”