Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
My fingers laced through his silky hair, pulling and tugging at the soft strands. He groaned again, and the sound caused a ripple from our joined lips straight down to between my legs. One of the hands at my ass moved up to my neck and tightened as his thumb tilted my head more to one side and he deepened the kiss.
The feeling of weightlessness hit my belly, and I began to fall. My roller coaster car rocked back and forth one last time before careening down the long slope. As we panted and clawed at each other, I lifted my imaginary hands into the air and enjoyed the crazy, scary, wonderful ride down.
When our kiss broke, I was mesmerized by the effect this man had on me. Gray’s hands came back to my face as he cupped my cheeks, stroking gently with his thumb while trailing feather-soft kisses from one end of my lips to the other.
His voice was gruff. “This is real.”
I swallowed, not understanding what he meant at the time.
The creak of the door opening and the guard’s loud voice made me jump. “Time’s up, Westbrook!”
Gray leaned his forehead against mine. “I gotta go. Remember what I just said when you start doubting yourself by Tuesday.”
Chapter 10
* * *
Gray
2 years earlier
“My commissary account balance somehow went from zero to the max of two hundred and ninety bucks,” Rip, my bunkmate, announced. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
I was glad my back was facing him. I continued to fold the laundry I’d just finished on top of my bunk. “How the hell would I know where the money in your account came from?” I lied.
I’d written a letter to Etta and asked her to fill his account a few weeks ago. She had access to all of my personal funds out in the real world. I’d been wondering if he’d gotten it.
“Maybe my Katie did it?”
I felt bad for giving him hope that his daughter had come around. But he wouldn’t take the money from me, and I knew he had a stack of letters he’d written her, but couldn’t afford to buy any postage. Rip and I had been bunkmates since the day I arrived. He’d already been here a few months, so he showed me the ropes.
“Maybe. But at least now you can pick up some of the gourmet foods you like so much,” I teased. “Ramen Noodles, prunes, Pop-Tarts.”
“Not everyone grew up eating caviar off a silver spoon, pretty boy.”
I chuckled. “What’s on your agenda today after dialysis?”
“Probably watch some TV. They’ve got a John Wayne movie marathon playing in the activity room this afternoon.”
“Ah. So a good long nap, then?”
He tossed a towel at my back.
Rip’s real name was Arthur Winkle. But he’d been nicknamed Rip because of his penchant to catnap. Rip Van Winkle. The guy nodded out in the middle of conversations, during dinner, and inevitably during TV time. He always denied being asleep, claiming to be “resting his eyes.” Whenever the inmates gathered to watch something, they all groaned when Rip joined them because he’d be snoring up a storm within ten minutes of the show starting.
“What time is your lady friend coming today?” he asked.
“Ten.”
Rip knew all about Layla and me. Mostly because I didn’t shut the fuck up about her, ever. Weekdays were basically a countdown to the weekend. And while Saturdays were always incredible, Sundays sucked because it was so long until I’d see her again. Her six months of community service only had another two weeks left, and I’d hesitated to bring it up because it felt wrong to ask her to keep driving here every week just to visit me, yet the thought of not seeing her for more than a year until I got out killed me.
“I think I’m going to write a letter to Katie and thank her for the money, then mail all these backlogged letters.” Rip wrote his daughter every week, like clockwork. She had never written back to him once.
“Sounds like a plan.” I looked at the time—ten to ten—then scooped up the apple I’d saved from lunch yesterday to butter up the teacher. “Better head down to class.”
***
“Tell me something you hated about your childhood.”
I sat back in my chair and folded my hands behind my head. Tell me something had become a weekly ritual for Layla and me. Each week one of us would ask a random question of the other. The experience of wanting to know everything about a woman was foreign to me.
Don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t the kind of guy who went on a date and only talked about myself. I’d had conversations, but most of them were surface—talk about jobs, vacations, that type of current stuff. I’d never wanted to know about a woman’s childhood. It had never even dawned on me to ask that kind of a question.