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)
More like a challenge than anything else, same as when he gripped my chest.
I half expected him to stop me, to shove me away and deny me the scrap of pleasure.
But Andrew.
Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.
He didn’t shove me away. He reached up to put his hands to either side of my jaw, pulling me in deeper.
Opening his mouth to me, like he always did.
I moaned as I felt his tongue slide out against mine. He tasted like whiskey and I knew I did, too.
I put my tongue along his jaw, licking along his skin, stopping lower on his neck to suck a slow kiss there.
I could feel him breathe.
“You’re saying you’d do all of this, without a drop of alcohol in you?”
“I’d do all this and a whole lot fucking more.”
I shoved one hand up under his shirt, sliding my palm up along his skin and dragging my fingertips across his nipple as I went for another kiss.
“Fuck you,” he whispered against my lips after I gave him a little nibble there.
But this time, there wasn’t venom in his voice at all.
He liked this just as much as I did.
I felt for the bulge under his shorts and gave it one quick squeeze.
And then I pulled back.
Taking it all away, and leaving him standing there with slick lips and half-lidded eyes.
God, I have never wanted to fuck someone more.
“I meant what I said,” I told him, swallowing hard. “I can’t afford to write bullshit puff pieces for the paper. I have nothing else in life. You have everything handed to you. Money. Athletics. Popularity. I was tossed aside like a piece of trash for my entire life, and everything I have is because I clawed for it, and I’m still clawing for it—”
“I wasn’t handed everything, Gray.”
“You will never understand,” I told him.
“That isn’t fucking true,” he roared. “What wouldn’t I understand?”
Something snapped in me.
The words started to spill out.
Not because I was drunk, but because Andrew was pushing me.
Pushing me with his words.
His attention.
His fucking eyes.
“You’ll never understand what it was like. Going home after school when you’re only ten and not knowing if your mom will be home,” I said. “Waking up cold on winter mornings, not knowing how much longer it’ll be before she can steal enough money to put the heat back on.”
His brow furrowed.
Every bit of malice dropped from his face.
Yeah.
This is why I don’t tell people about my childhood, Peachel. Poor little Gray Gilman, and the world he grew up in.
“Gray,” he said softly.
“Being forgotten in bars,” I continued, my chest tightening as I spoke. “Or your mom telling you that you couldn’t come home unless you used those little fingers to sneak as much cash as you could from every purse in a restaurant. Sometimes I watched my mom get hurt. Other times, I watched her hurt other people. She only had enough guts to fight other women, but she’d pull switchblades on them every time she felt like she probably wouldn’t get caught.”
“Christ, that’s enough,” Andrew said.
All at once he moved forward, and for a split second I thought he was going to try to fight. I juked to the right, trying to dodge.
And only when I stepped on the knot in the tree trunk did I realize that Andrew had been going in for a hug.
For fuck’s sake.
I’d already lost my balance.
I lurched forward, tripping and landing in the thicket of shrubs behind the tree.
Shrubs with fat thorns, apparently.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
My knees hit the lawn and the entire left side of my arm pushed into the shrub, thorns tearing at my skin and one part of my face.
“Oh, God. No,” Andrew said.
I turned and his eyes widened even further as he looked at me.
I glanced down and saw a streak of blood dripping down my arm. And then I turned it further and saw another. Then another.
And then I felt it trickling down the side of my face, too.
“I’m fine,” I said, more as a default than anything else.
“Shit, Gray, you don’t look fine. Let’s get you inside. Come with me—”
“Fuck, please don’t make me walk into a frat party all bloodied up,” I protested. “The last thing I need is anyone seeing me like this.”
Andrew’s eyes darted across my skin, panic rising in his face. “It’s a lot of blood, dude. Some of those cuts look deep. We need to get antiseptic on them.”
“I’ll probably be okay.”
“There’s a way we can go back inside. No one will see us. We go in through the side doors, into the study room.”
“And if there are people in there?”
“Trust me. No one will be in the study room.”
He put his hand down to help me up. I gripped his palm and winced as I moved, feeling one of my cuts sting.
He took me around the far edge of the building, past windows where I could see the outlines of people dancing and drinking inside, without a care in the goddamned world.