Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
“Impressive American reference.” I let my lips tip up although my chest heaved with emotion.
She flashed me a dazzling, white smile. “I’m practicing. I’ve got my citizenship test coming up.”
“I doubt they’ll ask about the origin and meaning of White Fanging someone.”
She shrugged. “I’m covering my bases.”
“Seriously, Calliope.” She gave my hand one more squeeze before she let it go. “I love the shit out of you, and I’m here for you, whatever you need. But I will kick your ass if you deny yourself happiness and use whatever happened with these bad men as evidence that you’re somehow bad too. Women don’t define themselves by the actions bad men force them into. We don’t judge ourselves by the actions of any man. Even Elliot.”
I looked at her. My fierce friend. A great mother. Someone who had experienced her own rock-bottom, who’d survived being in a stalemate with Kip about love and what it meant. Proof that something akin to a happy ending existed.
“Fine.” I let out a huff of breath. “But does that mean I’ve met my quota on deep and meaningful talks for a decade? I can’t handle it.”
She chuckled. “We’ll see.”
Though I was still playing the hardass bitch, I couldn’t deny that the talk did something. It took the weight off my shoulders. It opened my eyes that I did indeed have a whole bunch of women with arms extended, never expecting or rooting for me to fall but ready to catch me if I did.
It was a strange feeling.
I didn’t hate it.
Not one bit.
ONE MONTH LATER
Shaw Shack was bursting at the seams. Summer was gone. Fall had colored the leaves, but the weather was unseasonably warm, one last breath of it before the bite of winter descended. Tourists were squeezing the last out of their vacations. Drinking, eating, basking in their temporary lack of responsibilities.
My laptop was open in front of me, doing work while listening to people around me laugh and complain about their jobs.
I loved my job. Although I wasn’t getting enough dirt to take down a Russian oligarch to save my life, I was back to doing what I loved: making a fuck load of money and ruining men who deserved it. Just because I had accepted that I was in love with a good man and that I was going to live in a small town in Maine for perhaps the rest of my life, neither meant I had gone soft.
Part of my journey—or whatever one would call it—was discovering that I could feel and be soft. But that didn’t mean I stopped loving control. Luxury. Making money. Those were all still parts of my identity. Just not cornerstones of them. I now managed Rowan and Kip’s construction company, the fishing business and the restaurant.
I’d expected a huge battle from Beau about that, considering he wasn’t my biggest fan, and he was the kind of man who would’ve hated even the idea of being bailed out by a woman. There had been plenty of grumbling, but he hadn’t explicitly argued over my investment or my management of the business. A pleasant surprise.
My eyes flickered over to the wall of photos. A new one hung. From a couple of weeks ago. Dinner at Nora’s. Elliot’s father had been there. Beau. Clara. The blended family of our Jupiter crew.
Tiffany had managed to snap an image of Elliot and me after he’d tugged me onto his lap, against my protests of PDA, kissing my neck. I was smiling, my hair down. I looked extraordinarily happy.
She must’ve sent it to Elliot, and he hadn’t told me about having it printed, framed and mounted on the wall. He’d just done it.
My first instinct was to rip it off, protest that I didn’t deserve to be on the wall. But looking at it closer, seeing the relaxation in Elliot’s posture… I’d been so focused on what this relationship was doing to me that I didn’t see what it was doing to Elliot. The good things. I made him happy. It seemed impossible, yet I was tentatively allowing myself to accept it.
I sipped my water. Elliot made great martinis, but I’d stopped at one. I didn’t want to be fuzzy from booze when I gave him his reward for the photo. Not that he’d done it for any kind of reward, which was why he was getting a world class blow job.
I’d whispered this to him when he whisked forward to grab my glass. He’d smiled darkly, kissing my neck amidst the chaos of the bar, lighting up my synapses.
Though I had been working, my head throbbing from the noise and from craning my head at the wrong angle, I’d shut my laptop to watch Elliot work.
He had Blondie—I refused to refer to her by name because I was a petty bitch—helping him behind the bar. My pulse spiked each time she got close to him when she didn’t need to, laughing too loudly at whatever jokes he was telling—he wasn’t that funny—and shooting death glares in my direction.