Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Kind of like her huge, sparkling eyes, veiled by a sheen of tears.
My throat goes dry, and my pulse kicks up. I don’t know what’s wrong with my libido, but just being near her throws me out of control. I refuse to let my dick rule me. I rule my dick.
Nice, pickle balls. Just great. You’re doing a great job of that so far. She’s about to give you some terrible news, and all you can think about is how beautiful she is.
“I… okay, this is so crazy. You’re going to lose your shit, so please… just… just let me finish. Let me start at the beginning.” Her eyes flick over to the window before she tilts her face up to the antique copper tiles on the ceiling. “Umm, what is the beginning? I guess… uh, twenty-five years ago, when you went to Ohio to work in a little pie shop.”
I know my life is all over the internet, and the information, including dates, is readily available, but this sounds too personal for her to have just looked it up.
“I’m Dulcie Piecroft. My dad is Archie Piecroft,” she continues.
What. The. Fuck. Fuck. What the actual fucking fuck? I nearly fall off the counter.
I jerk my hand away from hers like she’s a red-hot stove intent on burning me down to cinders.
No. No, no, no. I did not just get a boner for Archie Piecroft’s daughter, who is at least two and a half decades younger than me. She’s not thirty. Counting back, she can’t be older than twenty-four.
Thank fuck.
But also… Jesus freaking fuck.
“Was this some master plan to get me thrown in jail?” I rasp. “You had an ID. It was checked!”
“It was fake. When I told you about me hiring a hacker to find out the details of your life and coming across this, and erm, maybe taking Callie’s place? I was kind of being serious. Well, not kind of. I was. I totally was.”
My pulse ratchets up to dangerous levels, my head spins, and my lungs close up. I’m going to stroke out. This is not happening. This is not real.
“Why?” I gasp, clutching the edge of the countertop to keep myself standing. “Was this some revenge plan?”
She signed those forms with a fake ID and a fake name. The real her isn’t accountable. I’m sure she could legally get in plenty of trouble for what she just confessed to, but I doubt that would matter if she were recording everything the whole time, and if she releases it to the world…
“No!” She throws her hands up, her face crumpling. “No, I swear. My dad wants… he’s going to lose the bakery. It’s the longest story, but he thinks if you come back to Ohio, if I could somehow convince you to do that, then everything would be made right. The curse would be broken, and the pie magic would come back.”
“This isn’t… this isn’t some fairytale!” It makes painful sense now what she said last night. She didn’t just walk in here and magically get me.
She knew me.
She’d studied me.
She’d prepared for this.
The connection I felt? It wasn’t real.
It was all a big ruse. She made me believe in her. She made me feel seen and understood. She looked past my face and saw the real me. Except, she didn’t. That was all just a big bunch of bollocks too.
Anger curdles in my gut like sour milk, and not the kind of sour milk you can do anything creative with. Just disgusting, nasty old milk that not even flies would drink if you threw it outside when there’s a spontaneous lack of fly food in the world, and they were all starving hard for something to avoid extinction.
But the sadness creeping through me like poison ivy, shivering across my skin, breaking over me, and itching fiercely, is worse. Worse than extinction. It’s so cheesy to say I got my hopes up, but I did.
It’s not all you got up.
Holy farging fuck. This would be a great time for my stupid head to shut up and give me a break. For once.
Callie… no, Dulcie, keeps doing the imploring thing with her hands, crushed at seeing me crushed because all my filters are non-existent.
How can I believe that her sorrow is real? It could just be part of her act. She did a grand job of making me believe her so far. Making me trust her. This is why it’s inadvisable to do that. Because generally, it goes to shit.
I learned that early on, when I was still a kid. There was shit at school, friends who betrayed me. And then, the shit that got me sent to Ohio. There was the pain of leaving, of knowing I wrecked a friendship and hurt a good man, but if he’d just understood, then I would never have had to do that. There was plenty more bullshit over the years. I made a name for myself, and I had a rich family. I made my own wealth and started a small empire in New York.