Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 112884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Kirby:
Trust me, I feel a lot of things for you but sorry isn’t one of them.
I close my eyes and lean back on my pillows before stretching out my legs in front of me. The phone in my hand feels like it’s a fifty-pound dead weight.
“You have to answer him,” I mumble to myself when the phone vibrates again in my hand and I look down at it.
Kirby:
I dare you to do it.
My fingers move before I can think, and the next thing I know, I’m putting the phone to my ear and listening to the sound of it ringing. It feels like it’s been ringing for five hours when not even one whole ring goes by when he picks it up midway. “Yes?” he says, not even bothering with hello.
“You can’t dare me to take a job,” I huff out at him.
“Why can’t I?” he asks and I hear him moving on his end, and I wonder what his house looks like. “Is there some rule somewhere that I don’t know about that says I can’t dare you when it comes to a job offer?”
“Kirby,” I say his name softly and then close my eyes.
“Lexi,” he says my name back in the same tone, and I don’t answer him. Both of us just sit here listening to the other person breathe. “Why don’t you want to take help from your parents?”
“Because it’s embarrassing,” I finally admit. “I’m almost thirty and my parents have to buy my house.”
“Did you ask them to buy your house?” he asks me and I don’t answer him, because he knows full well I would never. “Are you sitting at home doing nothing but wasting the day away, not bothering to work or taking the steps to get a job?”
“Okay, I get it.”
“I don’t think you do. Accepting help doesn’t mean you failed.”
“I know that also, but I just should have had things organized before.”
“What would you have done differently?” I listen to his question and I seriously have to think about it. “Would you have stayed longer, just so you could save up money?”
“I don’t think so.” My voice trails off. “I didn’t even know I was going to leave him that night.” I close my eyes.
“What was it that made you want to break free?”
I swallow the lump. “I think it was a bunch of little things that just accumulated and pushed me over the edge.” I sink down in the bed, to where my head is now on the pillows. “I worked so hard on the fundraiser that would make him and the hospital look good, and he ruined it.”
“I had a hand in that also.” His voice is soft.
“Why did you go out there?” I ask him. “What happened?”
“He didn’t tell you?” he asks the question and then I hear him sort of hiss. “Of course he wouldn’t. I walked out there to get some air. I just needed to…” He trails off and I close my eyes. “And he was there with this blonde.”
“Tatum.” I fill in her name.
“Whatever her name was, and they were…” He doesn’t want to say it, no doubt not wanting to hurt me. Even though he owes me nothing, he’s still not going to say it. I wait for him to tell me what happened before I tell him my side of it. Each word feels like it hurts him more than it hurts me.
“He tried to turn it around and say I was the one who let this happened.”
“Shocker.”
“He didn’t come home with me that night,” I tell him. “Ordered another car and told me he needed space to think about what happened. Needed me to think about what I did. It was supposed to punish me. The whole time in the car I thought about how this was my big night and he should have supported me, but instead he made things about him.” The tear escapes. “He spent the night fucking Tatum, and when I called him in the morning to tell him I left, he said he would stop.”
“I’m going to need you to stop talking right now,” he grumbles between clenched teeth, “and I take back the dare. I’m not daring you.”
“What?” I chuckle. “Why?”
“Because it’ll be me trying to force you to do it and it’s not right,” he admits and I hear the sound of a meow.
“Do you have a cat?” I sit up in bed.
“I do,” he confirms. “Jefferson. She’s an acquired taste.” His laughter fills the phone. “She chooses when she wants to be rubbed. She likes to be escorted to her food plate, even though there is always food in it.” I slowly put my head back down on the pillow, the smile filling my face as he talks about his cat. “She also hates to be held.”