Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
He rubs his jaw, thumb scraping along day-old stubble. “That what you think? That you’re an idiot.”
Tears burn my eyes, hot and frantic. “I don’t know what I think. I’m proud of the parts of me I’ve been building. The job. The address. The bank account. Even the stupid sneakers.” I kick one toe against the other like it will make the point. “But in here?” I tap my chest. “I feel like someone nobody wants. Not my ex, obviously. Not you, if you won’t even,” My voice breaks. “What’s wrong with me that no one wants me? Not my ex, and not you.”
Silence. The kind that makes you want to grab it and shake it until it speaks.
Kellum doesn’t look away. He steps in like he’s closing a distance people don’t see until they trip over it. His eyes lock to mine. “Nothing’s wrong with you.”
I laugh, sharp and mean at myself. “That’s what people say when they don’t want to do the work of telling you the truth.”
“That is the truth.” His tone edges toward steel. Not at me. At the thought. “Your ex is a man who wanted a puppet. It suited him because shadows don’t talk on their own. He knew underneath he couldn’t keep you trapped down for much longer.”
I flinch. The image is too clean. When I avoid his gaze, he cups my chin lifting my face to look at him.
“As for me,” he goes on, voice steady and low, “I didn’t take you to bed because I’m not gonna make your body get twisted up in your heart. I want you, Kristen.” The bluntness of it steals my breath. “Don’t mistake any of it. I want you. I’m a grown damn man. But I’m not gonna be the new bad habit you can’t break. I want you when your head’s clear and your list’s shorter and you can look me in the eye in the middle of the day and say yes without trembling unless it’s to come.”
The tears spill over, fast and hot. I scrub them away, angry at them for showing up. “But what if I can’t? What if I’m always a little shaky?”
“Then we ride it like we have been,” he says, like it’s the simplest answer in the world. “We don’t build on a wobble, that’s when you crash out. We build when it’s steady. You hear me?” His hand is a warm weight on my shoulder now, not pushing, not dragging. Placing.
My lower lip trembles somehow still needing more from him. “So Lana?”
He huffs. “Lana’s right about some things. I don’t commit to lies. I don’t play house to make someone feel like I might change. I’m not a porch and talking about growing old man.” He steps closer, close enough that the heat off his body sinks into mine like a remedy. “But she doesn’t know anything about this. You. Me. The fact that you sleep in my bed with a key I want you to keep. Or that you ate cereal out of my ugly bowl this morning and I liked it.” One corner of his mouth tips. “She never met this version of me. She never had me because that’s not what I was to her and she was to me.”
The world lurches into focus like he just adjusted some knob I didn’t know existed. “This version?”
“The one who’s trying.” His eyes don’t flinch from mine. “The one who doesn’t bail when the restlessness hits and a woman looks at him like he’s an anchor in a storm. The one who tells you to make a list and then sits at the table while you do it. The one who wants you in daylight as much as in the sheets.”
My heart does something reckless. In this very moment, I fall inside. My heart swells into something I can’t put into words. “Kellum.”
He lifts a hand and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, the gesture so careful it undoes me. “You’re not wrong to be jealous,” he adds, surprising me. “You’re not wrong to be scared. You got burned. You’re still smoldering from your life going up in a blaze. You still think it’s you. It’s not. It’s just what happens after a fire. You air out. It takes time.”
I’m crying again, quieter this time. The tears slide down without drama. “You sound like someone who knows.”
He half-smiles, the kind that doesn’t reach his eyes because the story behind it isn’t funny. “I know.”
“What if you can’t commit?” The word feels too big in my mouth and too small for what it means. “What if you never want that? Because Kellum, I know myself even burned I still want that in life. A partner, a lover, a best friend.”
He thinks for a long beat. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean. I can promise exactly one thing,” he answers at last. “I won’t take from you what I can’t keep. And I won’t keep you locked down. If all I’ve got is a shoebox of space for you, I’ll say so. You’ll decide if you want to stand beside me there awhile to see if space comes or goes or not. But you’ll always have a way out and you’ll know what you got standing in front of you. I don’t play games ever.”