Total pages in book: 203
Estimated words: 199654 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 998(@200wpm)___ 799(@250wpm)___ 666(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199654 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 998(@200wpm)___ 799(@250wpm)___ 666(@300wpm)
“If I were evil, I could probably zap you enough times that you’d go home,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter how many times you zap me, I’m goin’ nowhere without you.”
If he thinks sweet talk will work on me, he’s very wrong.
A minute later he asks, “If I let you zap me ten times, would that be punishment enough to warrant you giving me a chance, Bay?”
I don’t answer.
“Twenty?” he asks.
I roll my eyes.
“A hundred?”
I give him my back and tears prick my eyes as he says my name with sadness. As if I’m hurting his feelings.
Chin trembling, I manage to fight the tears back but wind up staring at the wall for ages before finally, his breathing evens out.
I turn over and look at him sleeping on his side, facing my direction, his hand on my pillow just a few inches away from me.
And it hurts. It hurts to look at him. It hurts that he seems to be reaching for me. It all just… hurts.
I turn over, choosing to stare at the wall some more. The fact that I don’t stare at him and watch him sleep speaks volumes about how much things have changed. If this were a month ago and Jase was sleeping on my trundle bed, I’d lay awake all night just to look at him and imagine him doing things to me.
***
I open my eyes to the room just beginning to lighten with the promise of the coming sunrise. Jase is watching me. He’s got his chin on the edge of my mattress and a look on his face that, for a split second, makes me question absolutely everything.
But because I don’t have amnesia, my current reality quickly slides firmly into place.
“Mornin’ baby,” he says softly.
His voice is gravelly and manages to spark something low in my belly.
He reaches forward and his fingertips hover just inches away from my face. His teeth sink into his bottom lip, and his eyes have a look that makes me spring up, away, scooching so I can get out of the bed and away from that expression on his face and the butterflies in my undies. Thankfully reality douses the spark.
Ensuring I don’t touch him on my way out of the bed, I escape to the bathroom and turn the water on for the shower, then use the toilet before undressing and getting in.
A moment later, there’s noise.
I peer around the shower curtain and screech because he’s in my bathroom, taking a leak!
He’s peeing on top of where I peed! I had planned to flush after the shower so the flush wouldn’t disrupt my water temperature. This is a level of intimacy I never expected to have with this guy. Any guy!
“What the hell?” I shout. “Get out of here! But don’t flu-”
Too late. Quick as lightning I jump back, screeching, as the water goes scalding hot.
“Sorry!” he says, “Fuck. You okay?”
I’ve covered myself with the shower curtain, standing back away from the showerhead, but this also means the floor is getting soaked.
“Get out!”
“Sorry!” he repeats. “I’ll make us some coffee. How do you take it?”
“Don’t bother.”
I know just how he takes his coffee – double cream, double sugar. But he’s never paid attention to the fact I take mine the exact same way, because of watching him drink coffee before I ever tried it, so of course he wouldn’t know that.
When I emerge from the bathroom in a robe while towel drying my hair, I stumble and nearly trip again. Because he’s lying on my bed, not the trundle bed – he’s just where I slept last night! He’s still in his underwear and he’s got his nose to one of my pillows.
“Fallin’ for me?” he quips.
“Nope,” I state firmly. “That ship sailed. Sailed and caught on fire before it sank. Put my pillow down, please. That’s just… creepy.”
As if I didn’t smell his pillow each time he crashed here the bazillion times he slept over when he and Grey were younger.
“Apples,” he says, taking another big whiff. “You never smelled like apples before.”
I frown. I don’t use apple shampoo or bodywash. I won’t let myself think about what Jase smells like. Because I memorized his warm, spicy, cinnamon scent a very long time ago. Though I refuse to think about that right now. Nope – not thinking about how apples and cinnamon go perfectly together…
He says, “Then just as you flopped into me in that car we were thinkin’ would take us to the airport, that’s what you smelled like. Dreamt about apples on the flight over. Dreamt you handed me one, then I woke up. Used to dream about apples, dream I’d be trying to get them, but they were always out of reach. And a second after I knew you were mine, I blacked out. Since then, you’ve been out of reach, too. I fucked up, Bailey. I’m really sor–”