Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
“I love the fall,” I said.
It was the first thing either of us had said in at least five minutes.
“I love it, too.”
Is that the most we’re ever going to agree with each other?
We fell back into silence and then a few minutes later, Gray pulled into the driveway of a modest house. It was a split-level on a standard residential street, the kind where most of the houses looked the same but there was a charm to it, somehow.
We got out and walked along a little concrete path toward the front door. The house had one colossal oak tree in the front yard, its canopy draping over the path.
“No shot you live here,” I said softly.
“My grandmother owns it, not me,” he said, reaching for his keys as we approached the navy blue front door. “Why’s it so shocking to you?”
I looked around the front yard.
“This place is so… normal,” I said.
“Gee, thanks. And I’m some weird freak who should live in an abandoned mine shaft, or something?”
I snorted. “No. You should live in a penthouse lair with black marble countertops and probably a bat signal on the roof.”
He turned the key in the lock. “Thanks for calling me a superhero, cutie, but I’m just a college student like you.”
A faint heat crept up to my cheeks.
Fucker, calling me cutie.
And the ridiculous idea that he was a college student “just like me” was equally outrageous. He was like… the second coming of Einstein, or something.
“Um. Is it going to bug your grandma, if I’m here?”
He pushed open the front door, dropping his keys on a little table inside. “For the next two days, she’s in Nashville at The Colossal Custom Auto and Cycle Show. My grandmother likes old classic cars. She goes with a few friends twice a year.”
Walking into the house felt like being wrapped in a blanket.
It smelled like wood and faintly of spiced vanilla, probably from the cluster of three big candles at the center of the entryway table. It was small inside, smaller than any house I’d ever lived in, but there was more life and character in here than my parents had ever put into one of our mini-mansions.
“Those plants are incredible,” I said, noticing the tall indoor tree with big, green leaves, sitting at the corner of the living room.
“That’s Grandma Bet’s other hobby. Gardening.”
“She sounds like a sweet lady.”
Gray hummed. “She’s a fucking firecracker. Not exactly sweet, but she is ten times more badass than me. Gardening is her most grandmother-ish activity, trust me.”
I laughed. “You make it seem like she’s out at clubs railing lines of coke on the weekends, or something.”
“Pretty sure she used to do a lot of coke, actually,” he said.
I glanced at him, waiting for him to say he was joking, but he wasn’t. “Damn.”
“She’s had a tough life, and she’s not an angel. But her wildest days are over, and she cares about me more than any other family member I’ve had. In her own way, of course.”
I smiled. “In her own Granny Badass way?”
“We don’t exactly share hot chocolate by the fire or anything. We don’t even talk that much. But we coexist peacefully. That’s all I ask.”
Along the hallway, multiple black and white photos of classic cars were hung on the wall. Next to one of the pictured cars, there was a young girl with dark curls piled on top of her head, posing in a leather jacket next to the driver’s side door.
“Is that her?” I asked him.
“Many, many years ago, yes. Always been into cars.”
“I guess you inherited that from her.”
“One of the only good qualities I got from my bloodline.”
As I followed him down the rest of the short hallway, questions flooded through my mind.
But something held me back from asking any of them.
More than once, he’d made it clear that he wasn’t proud of his family tree, and he didn’t like talking about it. I wanted to ask him so much, about what happened to him as a kid, or how he got to be so insanely smart despite all of it.
Or when he decided that he was going to go to law school.
I am standing next to a future fucking lawyer, I thought as he reached the end of the hall, pushing open a door.
“Best thing about living with Grandma Bet is that she hates big windows in bedrooms. She prefers the lower light levels in the guest room on the opposite side of the house, so the master bedroom was mine to take while I’m living here.”
I stopped in the doorway.
“This… this is not what I was expecting. In any way. What the fuck?”
The bedroom was the most peaceful thing I’d ever seen. The walls were painted a beautiful shade of blue, not jet black like I’d come to expect of him. The sheets were white and fluffy. And the windows were tall, looking out over a portion of the back yard that had a cluster of trees and shrubs.