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)
But as always, there was another part of the truth.
The truth was that I didn’t like seeing Andrew upset, even if I did have a penchant for a hot streak. I didn’t want to be the reason he was in pain.
But I felt like I’d just found the only soft spot in a knight’s full metal armor.
So he had gotten into a bad bar fight.
I didn’t know the details.
Didn’t know who he’d punched, or why.
But as far as I could tell, it was the only thing Andrew Peachel had ever done wrong in his life. In all my research, all I could find was that this man had been nothing but beloved for his entire goddamned life.
His parents loved him.
Every coach he’d ever worked with.
All of his friends, family, and former teachers only ever seemed to say great things about the guy.
So when I saw one tiny, anonymous comment on a college football forum—a comment from a while back that nobody paid attention to—that was a guy saying Andrew Peachel had punched him in a bar?
I literally didn’t believe it.
Nobody else on the gossip forum seemed to, either.
The comment was buried, forgotten, and eventually deleted by a moderator a few weeks later. I had to work from the archived version of the website to even know that it had ever existed.
That was when I should have known there might be some truth to the statement.
I also knew that I wasn’t going to write about it in my article.
But I couldn’t help but be attracted to this level of passion, spilling out of Andrew.
All pointed at me.
I breathed under his grip, feeling my chest rise and fall under his palms with every breath. He pushed down a little harder, as if he was expecting me to try to run for it.
“Andrew,” I said, unable to hide the thick desire in my voice.
“You,” he said, his voice low, “are the fucking worst.”
“I’m used to people hating me,” I told him. “I’ve had a lifetime of hatred being the only attention I get, Andrew.”
“I can’t stand this, Gray.”
“I know. But I’m not going to write about the goddamn bar fight, so can you chill out for a second?”
He blinked, shocked for the second time in under a minute. “Are you lying to me?”
“No, I am not lying. You have my word, on my grandmother’s life, on my life, and on yours. I will not write about your goddamned bar fight. I don’t know who you punched, or why, but I won’t mention it.”
He gripped his hands harder onto my chest, getting in close to my face.
God.
Close enough to smell the sweet remnants of whiskey on him.
Close enough that I could lean in and bite his lower lip.
“You won’t allude to it, either?” he growled.
“Peach, I know you’re trying to be menacing, but it’s making me fucking hard, so there is some full honesty for you—”
“Tell me you won’t even allude to it.”
“I won’t. I won’t mention anything relating to it, in any way. You have my word, Andrew, and I know that might not mean a lot to you, but I promise it does to me.”
He stared at me for a few more seconds.
Then he released me, leaving my body to slump against the brick wall.
I’d never seen him react like this before.
What set you off so much tonight?
He paced around the back lawn, running his hands through his hair, tilting his neck back to look up at the night sky. He looked like a frenzied gladiator.
“Why can’t you just write a fluffy puff piece article like every other article about sports in the TNU Weekly?” Andrew finally said.
He paced back over toward me, standing under the tree where I’d first found him out here.
“Because I can’t afford to.”
“Bullshit.”
“I can’t afford to, Peachel,” I told him, each word dripping with finality.
“You’re drunk as shit.”
I stood up from my spot on the wall and paced over to him. Each step felt a little bit like swimming through water. I was drunk.
Fine.
I was too drunk.
But I’d never been too drunk to tell the truth.
“You want to know one thing that was always different between me and my mom?” I asked him, coming in close to him like he had done to me before.
His eyes scanned my face. “What?”
“When she got drunk, she blacked out. She was sloppy. Did things she wouldn’t do otherwise. Turned into somebody else.”
“And you’re so different from that?”
“I am,” I told him. “I’ve never been too drunk to know who I am. Or to tell the exact truth. Everything I do, everything I say while I’m drinking is something I would do sober. No exceptions.”
And there was something I wanted to do right now that I’d have done sober, too.
I moved in quickly to crush my lips against his.
It was a rough kiss.