Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
“We can stop if you want to.”
He gazes into my eyes.
I return his gaze, lost in the warmth of his face.
The next instant, he presses me back against the sand, and our lips crash together like they’d never separated. We forget the world and all the concerns we just dug up as our bodies entwine on this secluded, crime-scene beach.
We’re the crime.
He abruptly stops again and sits up, straddling my hips. “And no, we do not have to slow down.” I wonder if he’s been thinking about it this whole time. “All I’ve known is slow. For years and years. So slow that I feel like I’ve been stopped. Stuck. Trapped. I don’t want to know that feeling anymore.” I just noticed that he’s undoing his shorts. Wait, what? “If you want this as badly as I do—and I really hope you do, I hope I haven’t been misreading all of this—I am really, really ready to give it up to you right now, right here, right on this beach, you, me, the waves, and none of the noise of our lives.”
None of the noise of our lives.
It only just now seems to fully set in that Finn is trying to get away from his own noise. His own life. Maybe even things I don’t know about, spinning out of his control.
We both escaped here to this beach.
He stops fumbling with his shorts. “Oh … I don’t have a condom. Or lube. Or literally anything.” He needs more than a condom and lube? “I’m so used to doing it with the same guy for so long, we never needed protection, and—”
There’s a noise from the woods—skittering, scurrying, crunching of branches.
Finn and I look, both having heard it. No one’s there.
But it always feels like someone is.
Then Finn flinches—from the vibration of his phone. He pulls it out of the pocket of his shorts, still hanging loose and opened off his sexy hips, and peers at the screen. “It’s my friend Chase. No one’s at the bungalow or near it. Seems safe and, in his words … ‘totally lame and empty and creepy as always’.” He looks at me. “We can go back.”
I hook my arms around the small of his back, with him still straddling my lap. “If I remember correctly, there was a box of ten-year-old condoms in the bathroom cabinet at the bungalow.”
He bites his lip.
I think that’s a yes.
We’re off the sand in the next instant and heading back through the trees when he looks at his phone again. “Oh, I missed something from twelve minutes ago. Must’ve been while I was driving or—”
He comes to a dead stop.
I turn back, noticing. “What is it?”
He says nothing. Only stares at his phone. Unblinking. Panic setting into his eyes.
“Finn?” He slowly lowers his phone, silent, lips parted, staring off blankly. “Finn?” I try again. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s …” He looks at his phone again, as if to be sure of something, then slaps it to his chest. “Fuck.”
“What’s going on? You’re freaking me out.”
He faces his screen to me.
My eyes drop down to it.
It’s three photos—shots of Finn leaving the bungalow this morning. I recognize his disheveled outfit from last night, peering over his shoulder as he flees the front porch. Obvious shots from someone who was likely lurking across the street, sent from a number with no ID, no name or info, bearing the simple message: “It looks like you had a late night, Finn.”
Chapter 12 - Finn
“This is all my fault,” River keeps saying to me.
“We don’t know who sent it,” I remind him as we walk back to the car. “It could’ve been my ex.”
That surprises him. “Really? He’d be that creepy?”
“Who knows? I apparently didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. Didn’t the message seem a bit … personal to you?”
“Strangely.”
“So if it was some reporter or journalist, I think that pic would’ve ended up straight online. Doesn’t that make more sense? This was definitely personal. Someone I know.”
“You’re talking so fast. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“And if it wasn’t Theo—which it totally was—it could have just been a friend playing around with me.”
“Some friend.”
“I have some weird friends,” I point out as I step over a fallen branch. “I sure don’t think it’s a psycho fan of yours, otherwise the message would’ve been far more threatening, like ‘River’s mine, stay away from him!’ or maybe some nasty insult toward me … calling me a star fucker …”
“Star fucker?”
“No matter who or what this nonsense is, I think going back to the bungalow is definitely out of the question. At least until I know for sure that it was a prank.”
“Then where should we go? Are you sure we shouldn’t just stay here? The beach seemed fairly safe to me.”
“Yeah, until the next message I get is a shot of my bare ass while the two of us are fucking. Then I’ll be the second nudist living on this beach.” I stop. “I … do have an idea. But it’s probably a terrible one.”