Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92371 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92371 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
“Best sandwiches in Minneapolis,” he says after swallowing a big bite.
“For sure.” I nod while blotting my mouth with a napkin. “Have you brought Blair here?”
“Of course.” He eyes me, and it’s like he has a secret.
The heaviness of his gaze on me, even when I’m not looking, makes it hard to concentrate.
“You said you met Blair in San Francisco. What made you leave Minneapolis? And how bizarre is it that she’s from here too?”
“It was a coincidence. Kismet in her mind.” He grins. “And my company’s headquarters is in San Francisco. I can work remotely, but I decided a change would be good. It was nice to have more in-person meetings.”
“New York will put you even farther away. Are you looking forward to living there?”
“Good question.” He glances out the window with a faraway look in his eyes. “Leaving Minnesota is never easy. But sometimes the first part of moving on is … moving.”
When his attention shifts to me, I return a sad smile. “That’s good advice.”
“No.” He grunts. “It’s not advice.”
He’s on the verge of marriage and all the bliss that’s supposed to come with it. Yet, all I see is a tortured soul. Did I do this to him?
I want to reach across the table, squeeze his hand, and apologize for everything I did, but mostly for the only thing I didn’t do.
“Do you think Callen is your future husband?” His question jumbles my thoughts.
“Uh …” I press the pad of my finger to a crumb on the table, giving it all of my attention while I formulate the response to a question I’ve never considered. “No,” I say with every intention of further explanation, but there is none. At least, none that I can give Murphy.
“Keeping it casual, huh?”
“Keeping my whole life casual.”
A tiny muscle twitches in the center of his forehead, like he’s trying to disguise his reaction. Everything is a disguise between us.
Murphy clears his throat. “How long do you think you’ll be Hunter’s homemaker?”
“Oh,” I say dramatically. “Now that’s the one relationship in my life that could go the distance.”
The grin on his face looks like it’s there against his will.
“I don’t know what I’ll be doing tomorrow.” I shrug. “Today I am here.”
“But?”
I shake my head. “No but. No comma. No asterisk. Today I am here. Period.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Murphy
If love doesn’t break your heart,
perhaps it’s not true love.
Eight Years Earlier …
She said she wanted to come back to me. Yet, when we made love, we did so with an intensity and desperation of the world ending.
Deadlines be damned. We spent our last days together in bed or in the kitchen, making a meal to refuel before going back to the bedroom.
“Murphy,” she whispered, hand curling with a fistful of my hair as I kissed her inner thigh.
“Come back to me,” I murmured, reaching for her breast as my mouth tasted her.
Her chest rose and fell in hard, erratic breaths while she lifted her hips from the mattress. When she closed her eyes, a tear escaped. It wasn’t the first, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. What I didn’t know was the reason for them.
She gasped when I crawled up her body and pushed inside of her like I could claim something that wasn’t mine. And there was no uncertainty about it. Alice was not mine.
The only thing that felt real about us was the inevitable wreckage.
“I love you,” I said with a labored breath before kissing her.
She curled her fingers, nails digging into my flesh, while turning her head to break the kiss. “Don’t,” she said, eyelids blinking heavier with each thrust. “Don’t love me now. Love me when I’m yours.”
God, if only she knew how badly I wanted that, how often I imagined it, and not just when I was inside of her. Every time I walked into the room, she’d grin and take an audible breath as if I were the very air that fed her lungs. It was such a subtle, intimate gesture.
And then there were times when our bodies searched for each other.
When we walked around the lake, she didn’t just hold my hand, she hugged my arm. During a meal, she’d say something funny or cute while stretching her leg until her foot rested on mine. Then I rested my other foot on hers, stacking them like we couldn’t stop touching each other.
“Whatever it is, I can take it,” I said, with her naked body draped over mine as we came down from our high.
“Another orgasm?” she asked in a groggy voice, turning her head a fraction to kiss my chest. “I’m pretty tired. Wake me in a couple of hours.”
The same humor that attracted me to her, the playful one-liners, no longer brought me joy. Every quip felt like a kick in the gut meant to keep me at a safe distance.