Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 136559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
I have no choice. I punch his arm, but then I hear the click of a camera. It’s Leighton, and she’s smiling serenely.
“Are you publishing that?” I ask, but my voice doesn’t sound like it’s coming from me. It sounds like I’m trying too hard to talk normally. Or maybe more like I’m trying too hard to keep it even, to talk to her like anyone else would. But how the fuck would my teammates talk to her? How the hell do they talk to the coach’s daughter? I’ve got to get out of my head around her. Especially since she’s here in a work capacity, and if she’s here now, she might be around again.
She tilts her head, an amused look turning her lips. “Don’t worry, I don’t publish everything I shoot. But it’s cute to get pictures of you guys clowning around. How would you feel about this?” She bends to show us a picture of us goofing off. “I’ll need Everly’s approval, of course, but I think it’s fun.”
She’s not looking at me as she says this, and I stay quiet too, because I don’t want to let on what I’m thinking about. My mind has wandered to the pictures she took of us. The ones she was supposed to send me. I can’t think of anything but the one time I stood right next to her, looking at pictures on the back of her camera.
Those images are lodged in my head the rest of the morning as we plant peas and other veggies. They won’t leave, and the more I think about them, the more I have to know. What did she do with those pictures?
Later, when the event wraps up, she’s packing up her gear. I walk past, then stop, unable to resist. “Do you need a ride?” I ask, my voice low but my eyes locked on hers so she can read my face if she needs to.
She looks around. Everly’s deep in conversation with a reporter, and Max is with her. “I can take the bus or ask Everly to drive me home,” she says, glancing back at them.
“But I’m offering.” I try to keep my tone casual. “It’s no big deal to give you a ride.”
She nods. “You’re right.”
A minute later, she’s sliding into my car, and we’re leaving the parking lot like we’re escaping. Something in me relaxes as soon as we’re out of there, on the streets of San Francisco with my team far behind, and I can’t hold back. “What happened to the pictures?”
She glances at me, as if she’s feigning confusion. “Which ones?”
“You know which ones,” I say, feeling an uncharacteristic edge in my tone. There’s a part of me that thinks she might have deleted them, erased that day like it didn’t happen. The possibility’s been gnawing at me all morning. Even though we can’t be together, it’s like I need to know that we might have tried. That even in spite of both our relationship baggage—because I know I have plenty of checked luggage, and based on what she said the day we were together, I’ve got a hunch she has a carry-on too—we’d still have tried. The thought that I could be wrong about that is a bruise I can’t stop touching.
“Don’t make me spell it out.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” she says, arching a brow. “I take a lot of photos.”
At the red light, I turn to her, my irritation slipping through in my tone. “The ones from that day.”
She looks at me, her gaze calm, steady. “And I’m asking you—which ones?”
Like she’s forcing me to admit I can’t stop thinking about all of them. Well, easy enough. “Every shot. What happened to them?”
A small, devilish smile plays on her lips, and it’s clear she has the upper hand and knows it, maybe even likes it. “I kept them.”
She has them, and I don’t. That’s not fair. She gets to revisit that day whenever she wants, and I’m left with nothing. I’m irrationally annoyed. “Why didn’t you send them to me?”
“You said we weren’t going to talk.”
Technically, we said date, but pointing that out would be a dick move. Especially since I never responded to her thank you text. And yet, I’m kind of a dick, when I add, “You said that too.”
“Yes, we both said that,” she corrects me softly.
And she honored that, and I have mad respect for her self-control. But still, I’m so tightly wound right now. Since the second I saw her peering at the back of her camera, it’s all I’ve been able to think about—the pictures. Except, no. It’s not even the pictures that are driving me wild. It’s what she might have done with them. That’s what I need to know. If she’s as affected by that day as I am.