Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Yes, I knew this for a fact.
I’d never recover.
Not…
Ever.
TWELVE
“I’M NOT IN LOVE”/“SHADOWBOXER”
We met at Randy’s Donuts, which were awesome, but we were a Bosa family, so it was highly unlikely anyone would catch us there, exactly why we were meeting at Randy’s.
I didn’t know why I came.
That scene a couple of weeks ago at Knox’s house, when what we were went up in smoke, was enough to end a girl.
Especially when that girl had to pretend, every day with everyone in her life, that it never happened at all.
But part of me was hoping Knox asking me here was about him having had some time to think about what he said, how he said it (loudly), his demands, that they were totally out of line, and he wanted us to figure it out and get back together.
I arrived first, which sucked.
But I was able to get my favorites, and his, and buy us both a cup of coffee, so at least I was fortified with caffeine and a couple of hits on a buttermilk glazed.
He showed…and damn.
Watching him walk in, tall, broad and beautiful?
I hadn’t come close to resuscitating myself since we ended.
But still.
I died another death.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him since. In the world I never wanted to live in, where we gave it a go and discovered we were awesome, and then it all fell apart, this was what I’d been trying to avoid.
At the look on his face, I had hope, because his beautiful hazel eyes ringed with their dark, dark lashes never left me from the second he entered, and he looked as wasted as I felt.
After he sat across from me, I slid the apple fritter and bear claw his way, then his paper cup of coffee—milk, not cream, no sugar.
He looked down at it then at me with a soft, poignant smile on his face.
And there was another death.
“Remembered,” he muttered.
“It was only a couple of weeks ago,” I replied, took a sip of coffee, then said, “Okay, I’m here. You’re here. But why am I here?”
“Shit has been weird between us.”
Well…duh.
“Around the others,” he continued.
I’ll repeat…
Duh.
“What happened at the Christmas party can’t happen again,” he carried on.
Yeah, at the Oasis Square Christmas party, we’d gotten into it.
It was silly shit.
I’d told him I had a present for him, bought before we broke up, and I wanted to get rid of it by giving it to him.
Okay, so perhaps in an alternate universe I’d admit that using the words “get rid of it” were not the strong choice if I wanted to avoid an altercation (but I’d only admit that in an alternate universe).
He told me he was uncomfortable accepting it because he hadn’t gotten around to getting me anything (men and their last-minute Christmas shopping, ulk).
I told him that didn’t matter, my gift didn’t really matter, but I couldn’t return it because the return window had closed, and I couldn’t use it.
He told me, if the gift didn’t matter, then I could just give it to one of the other guys.
I told him I didn’t buy it for one of the other guys, I bought it for him.
He suggested that our discussion was not about the gift, but about something else, and maybe we should take time to have a chat (and now I suspected the chat he’d been suggesting was supposed to be like the one we were having now at Randy’s).
I told him we’d said what needed to be said, and that was not going to happen.
This degenerated to some harsh words, some curse words, me poking him in the chest (yeah, I did that, so lame) and both of us storming off in opposite directions.
Though, obviously since then, I changed my mind about the chat.
“We need to figure this out, Luna,” he concluded.
That was exactly why I changed my mind about the chat.
“And what do you want out of this, Knox?” I asked.
“I want you in my life,” he stated immediately and inflexibly.
My heart leapt to my throat with hope.
“We were friends before, babe. We can get there again,” he went on.
My heart shriveled to nothing.
Friends.
He wanted to be friends.
The fuck of it was, to keep things copacetic with our crew, neither of us had any choice.
We had to go back to being friends.
“What we had, Luna,” he said softly before I could share my thoughts, “it was fantastic. I’ll never remember it any other way. And you’re you. I can’t lose you. So I want you how I can have you, and that’s how I can have you.”
I thought what we had was fantastic too.
But it wasn’t.
It was just fantasy.
I knew this because, in the intervening time, he hadn’t thought on things and come to me to work it out. He hadn’t talked to Cap about how Cap didn’t really love Raye being an Angel, but it was a huge part of who Raye was, so he found a way to deal with it. He hadn’t talked to Eric, who had lived through some of the Rock Chick/Hot Bunch stuff, and had definitely been around for their decade plus of being married, happy, making babies and raising them. All of those men and women finding a way for everyone to be just who they were without someone demanding they excise a chunk of that to have their man.