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)
I want to tip her chin up and put a smile back on her face. I want to tell her that I’ll go to Ohio and do whatever she wants, but that’s just… highly inadvisable.
“I think it left with you, and he thinks seeing you again and making things right between you two is the only way to fix this,” she adds.
“You let me kiss you.” I don’t mean for that to come out, but it does, snappy and harsh.
“I…”
“If things had not gotten sour between your dad and me, I would have been your dad’s close friend. You weren’t even born when I met your dad.”
More acid. This time, for an entirely different, justifiable reason. Except my brain and body are currently at war, sending all sorts of mixed messages. There are parts of me that haven’t quite… calmed down the way they should have. That’s just fucked. Beyond fucked. It’s whatever fucked is a thousand years in the future when someone invents a new word that’s just as satisfying. My brain says no, but in the next breath (brain breath?), it wants to justify something. I don’t even know what it is. I won’t allow myself to process it.
“Finding you hot wasn’t part of the plan,” she snorts, rolling her eyes. She taps her foot and gives me a great stink eye as though she’s not bothered in the least that we kissed.
She’s nearly two decades younger than I am, and we kissed. That makes me one of those clichés, doesn’t it?
The something that my brain is trying to conjure up by waving brain fingers of its own in an asshole magic move to rival anything I could do with my body is that there is a part of me that still finds her attractive.
I might be freaking out.
But it’s not a whole body, full-on, complete panic mode meltdown.
“It’s really quite inconvenient that you’re sexy and adorable,” she huffs.
“Stop!” I shove both hands in my ears like I’m the one who’s twenty years her junior.
But of course she doesn’t stop. She just speaks louder. “You’re one of those people who anyone would come for a certain reason. For the cooking, I guess, because that’s the most logical reason, but once they know you, they’d stay for you because you’re kind and adorable, and you have this infectious energy.”
Anyone who has known me for the past few years would likely say she’s wrong.
I can’t help her.
That shouldn’t chafe as hard as it does.
I have no magic. I lost it. It’s gone.
“Plus, you’re hot as fuck.” She seems to have recovered enough to give me a devious wink, revealing that the person she was pretending to be and the real Dulcie are on the same page, at least on a take-no-shit, sass-right-back, snark-with-the-best-of-them level. “You have a body that could be a statue; it’s so hard. You’re also a great dancer, and you’re a great kisser.” At those words, I gasp, and she struggles to contain a grin as she adds, “So yeah, that’s exceptionally inconvenient.”
I shove both hands into my hair and fold over at the waist. I’m going to throw up soon. It’s going to happen. The anxiety is too much. This is all too much. “Inconvenient? Christ, you were sitting in my lap!”
Oh god, she’s felt my boner.
She touched my bare chest.
She was going to undress me and let me—
I gasp for air that isn’t there. All the oxygen in the room has been sucked out by a giant vacuum hose thing that must somehow be attached to it. This is how I’m going to die. By mortification and hyperventilation and probably a few other ations.
“Luca.”
I’ve been so busy trying to breathe that I didn’t even hear Dulcie creep up to me.
She puts her hand on my shoulder and rubs in a small circle. Do not act like a cat and start purring. Do not. I try to jerk away, but the movement is all in my head. My brain can’t get enough oxygen to make my body obey. Especially not when her hand spreads from one shoulder blade to my spine and then to the other side, tracing the smallest pattern.
“Whoa. In and out. Deep breaths. In. Out.” She mirrors the pattern of deep breaths while her touch spreads like fire through my body, cutting through muscle and bone and embedding in my cells. Her soft voice near my ear temporarily does me in. “I know it’s a little taboo, and some people wouldn’t get it, but I’m an adult, and so are you. We’re allowed to find each other attractive.”
“You fed me all the lines,” I gasp, but it’s more like “Smoo mfddd me mwall dehhh limes,” as I struggle to speak around the breaths I’m trying to suck in.
“I can’t make you believe it was real, but it was.” Her hand. More small circles. More small shivers and wild electricity that I should in no way be feeling. “This whole thing just got really messed up. I didn’t plan to come here today, and… and… I just wanted to make a pie. You said you haven’t made one since you left Ohio, and I thought maybe, if you found your passion for it again, you’d be more receptive to the idea.”