Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
She turned and started walking across the backyard with far less care than she had entered. One of the motion-activated lights came on, but she simply moved through. If her shadow was the last thing he saw, it was okay with her.
How could she be doing this?
How could she walk away from him?
He was the best part of her day. He was supposed to be her dad. Not gross-like. He was supposed to be Ian to her Charlotte. She was supposed to get what her parents had, and there was no way it would be like that with anyone but Cooper. No way. She wouldn’t ever feel this way again. She wouldn’t ever love again. He’d been her shot.
She’d never actually had a shot.
“Hey.” Cooper was suddenly behind her. “What is that supposed to mean? Pretend I don’t know you?”
She stopped. It would be far smarter to keep walking. They didn’t come back from this. His mom didn’t like her. An ache pulsed through her. She’d always thought Eve liked her. She wondered if Alex thought she was bad for Cooper, too. Yes, it would be better to walk, but these were her last minutes with him and she couldn’t lose them. No matter how brutal they became. She turned his way. He was ghostly, caught in the shadows from the pool and security lights. “It means if you ignore me and I ignore you, then you get what you want. No one will think you’re friends with the nasty bitch, and you can move forward and become everything Mommy wants you to be. You might be homecoming king one day if you play your cards right and hang with the popular people.”
“Don’t bring my mom into this. She didn’t mean it that way.”
There wasn’t any other way to mean it. “You have to save yourself from me, Coop. Except I’m a motherfucking hero. I’m going to do it for you. You want to let assholes like Jimmy walk all over you, who am I to complain?”
He wouldn’t be hers to defend. He would be on his own.
Except he wouldn’t be. He would have all his friends, and all the kids they grew up with would likely take his side because he was Cooper and she was…she was who she was.
“He’s not walking all over me,” Cooper argued. “I was crowding the plate. It’s baseball. Are you planning on beating the crap out of the guys guarding me when I play basketball?”
“Not anymore,” she admitted. She gave him a shrug like none of this truly mattered. “You’ve made yourself clear. It’s fine. I’ll move on to the next guy.”
She wished she hadn’t said the last part. The look of pain on Cooper’s face would stay with her forever. Except it wasn’t pain she saw in his brown eyes. It was so much worse. It was pity. “Kala, there’s no next guy. I’m sorry. I’m not handling this well. I don’t know how to tell you we’re moving too fast and I’m not comfortable. I’m fifteen. I care about you. I really do, but you are so intense and I’m not ready.”
He never would be. She would always be too intense. Always too much. He would find his sweet girl to take to homecoming, and then he would go through a string of them until he finally settled down with his white picket fence and two point five kids.
She would probably be dead by then, and it wouldn’t matter. He’d always been a dream. Maybe he represented a part of herself craving some normalcy.
She wasn’t going to get it. “You snooze, you lose, bud. Have a good high school experience. It’s when you’re going to peak, so enjoy it.”
He went pale.
Fuck. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know,” he replied. “But it still hurts.”
Yes, she should have kept walking. “Well, I’m sure your new friends will comfort you. Look, there’s no way for us to avoid each other so how about we agree to be polite.”
“I don’t want to be polite, Kala. I only know if we get together now, I don’t think we’ll be together in the future. I don’t think we make it through. It would be better to be friends now and see what happens.”
Friends? She’d never really been his friend. “Sure. But in the spirit of our new friendship, I’ll forego these Saturday nights. I don’t think friends should do what we’ve been doing.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let it get this far. That’s on me. Kala, I’m sorry I let you think…”
She wasn’t going to stand here and listen to all the ways he’d played her. She hadn’t thought he was capable of playing her. “No need. We understand each other now. You’ve said what you needed to say. Good-bye. Follow me and we’ll have a problem.”
When she walked away this time, he stayed in the shadows.