Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 89519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
“‘Insufferable,’” he echoes proudly. “I like it.”
“Of course you do. Fits you better than ‘smug shithead.’”
“I like that too.” He laughs, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “You talk a lot when you’re uncomfortable.”
False. “I talk a lot when I’m annoyed.”
“There’s no difference.”
This was supposed to be a break. A mental detox. A quiet, soul-reviving staycation filled with tea, face masks, and perhaps one or two melodramatic cries.
He leans back in the chair, adjusting the ice pack like the conversation is physically draining him. “Look. I’m not trying to be rude, but neither of us rented this place to host. I rented it to be alone. You’re not part of the itinerary and could have left when you found out it was double-booked.”
“Leave and go where?” I throw my hand toward the trees. “Pitch a tent and hope a bear helps me set it up?” Because trust me, they’re in there by the dozens. I’ve woken up plenty of mornings with them digging through the dumpsters of my apartment complex.
Maverick raises his brows and cocks his head toward the opposite direction, toward Moonrise at Star Lake.
“If I could spend thousands of dollars for several nights of silence, I would have. Okay, pal? We’ve already covered this topic. Move on from it.” Not all of us have NFL money—not that I have a clue about the balance of his bank account.
“Which—by the way,” I go on, totally triggered. “I don’t actually know for sure you play professional football. You could be lying.”
His mouth twitches like he’s holding back a laugh. “Sure. I blew out my knee for shits and giggles.” His exhale is sharp and long as he adjusts his ice pack. “I’m just saying—if it were me? And I showed up to a rental and someone was already here? I’d leave.”
“Well, congratulations,” I say brightly. “You’re a better person than I am.”
“I didn’t say I was a better person.”
“It’s definitely what you meant.”
His gaze flicks over to me again, heavy and unamused. “I meant I wouldn’t stick around where I clearly wasn’t wanted.”
Ouch. Direct hit.
I suck in a sharp breath and look away, pretending to admire the lake again so he doesn’t see the pain behind my eyes.
He’s not wrong.
He just didn’t have to say it. Period.
Chapter 4
Maverick
I’m going to stay out of her way, she’s going to stay out of mine.
Easier said than done . . .
And it’s obvious we need rules because it’s been twenty-four hours since this whole double-booked-cottage disaster kicked off. Hours of frosty silences, aggressive door slamming, and the sounds of her scrolling through her phone from the couch—in a volume loud enough for me to hear everything—waiting for the callbacks from the housing company. Calls that are undoubtably never going to come. Not from my rental company. Not from hers.
It’s obvious: No one is coming to fix this mess.
Not anytime soon.
So yeah—we need some goddamn rules.
And I love rules.
Rules are boundaries. Rules keep you from losing your goddamn mind when a woman with big eyes and bigger opinions takes over half your house and acts as if you’re the inconvenience.
“I’m putting some ground rules on the fridge,” I announce, scribbling them onto the back of a flyer I found in a drawer. “So we don’t kill each other.”
She stares back at me through the patio screen, sitting with a paperback, pretending to read. “Excuse me?” she barks, snapping the book shut. “You’re making rules now?”
I don’t look up from the counter. “Ground rules.”
“Without me?”
“Pretty sure dictatorships operate faster than committees.” I smirk to myself and mutter, “Good one, Mav—you’re hilarious.”
Suddenly she’s up and out of the chair, the sliding door screeching on its rusty rail, and standing with her arms crossed, eyebrow raised. “This isn’t a dorm, Maverick. You don’t get to slap a passive-aggressive list on the fridge and call it diplomacy.”
No one said anything about being diplomatic. Literally no one.
I calmly tape the list to the fridge with a strip of painter’s tape I found in the junk drawer. “It’s not passive aggressive. It’s straight-up aggressive aggressive.”
She bumps into me so she can scan the list. “‘Rule one: No threats of homicide before coffee’?” she reads. “You wrote this with crayon.”
“It was the only writing instrument I could find.”
Her nose scrunches as she continues reading. “‘Rule two: Shared spaces are for quiet activities only’? So now you’re dictating the volume of my voice?”
“And your phone. And the TV.” I nod. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Glad she understands.
Then I watch as she rips the list off the fridge and crumples it up like a drunk dude at a bar crushing a beer can.
Rude!
Then—of course—she pivots to face me, hands on her hips like she’s the sheriff of this rental cottage. “If we’re doing rules”—she notches her chin up—“we’re doing them together.”