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)
FFS!
I didn’t have the patience for this. Not now.
But yesterday did happen, and by damn, she couldn’t pretend it didn’t.
“We’re gonna figure this out, Dream,” I told her.
“Is that a threat?” she asked.
“If you wanna take it that way,” I said breezily. “But strap in. You showed me what we could have yesterday, and it meant everything to me.”
She wasn’t so good with the attitude I didn’t see her eye twitch when I said that last.
Thus, I kept at her.
“I don’t have it in me right now to go a round with you, and you have to get to work. But this isn’t over.”
She said nothing.
I held her gaze.
She still said nothing.
I continued to hold her gaze.
She then said something. “Are you leaving, or what?”
Argh!
I stomped to my bag. I then stomped to the door.
At the door, I called to the empty living room (my sister had disappeared), “Thanks again! Later!”
No reply.
Whatever.
I kept stomping, this time to my car.
Fortunately, it was Saturday, so I didn’t have to go to work.
And it was a little out of the way, but my day yesterday, and my morning this morning screamed I deserved it. Therefore, before heading home and invariably to an Angel Interrogation, I sidetracked to JL Patisserie and found my luck had changed.
They had their famous pistachio-chocolate croissant in the case.
I got that and a dirty chai to go, and to fortify myself for what was sure to come, ate it greedily (and sloppily, they didn’t skimp on the fillings) on the way home.
I was parked, had shoved the electric juicer into my car, and was headed to the complex gate when my luck changed again, and an unexpected trauma reared its ridiculously pretty head.
Cheyenne angled out of her car in one of the visitor’s spots and hoofed it so she was right in the way of me getting to the gate to the Oasis Square courtyard.
For God’s sake…
Why me?
Why?
I halted and started, “Listen—”
“No,” she snapped, leaning toward me, her pretty face twisting, making it not so pretty anymore. “You listen to me, Luna. Stand aside. Back off. Take a hike. All three. Just fuck off.”
I tried again. “Cheyenne—”
“You hanging around just confuses him, and I know that’s what you mean to do, but it’s a fucked-up play.”
Did I say I didn’t have a lot of patience this morning?
Well, as the seconds ticked by, I had less and less.
“He broke up with you,” I pointed out, my voice tight.
“He didn’t break up with me…we’re on a break,” she stated delusionally. “That’s different.”
“All right, Ross,” I scoffed.
Her face scrunched angrily.
“And he wouldn’t have done that if you weren’t playing your games,” she shot back.
She might be right. I’d been playing a game with Brady.
But no man who was into a woman for the long haul dumped her ass because his semi-kinda-not-quite-but-also-still ex was fake-flirting-with-and-dating his bud.
Further, no woman should continue to pursue a man who would do that to her.
“I don’t have any control over what Knox does or does not do,” I noted.
“You sure try,” she retorted.
That wasn’t true.
As such.
“This isn’t cool,” I returned, and because my patience was spent, perhaps ill-advisedly, I went on, “It’s actually a dozen shades of psycho.”
Her perfectly plucked brows reached her hairline.
“I’m not psycho,” she snapped.
She was totally psycho.
I started to count it down.
“One, your man broke up with you. Take it like a champ and move on. Not doing that and pretending you’re still together and horning in to see him first after he was shot,” I paused for effect, “twice, when his best bud and his concerned boss were right there, is psycho. Two, showing at the home of the friend of your ex who you view as competition in order to confront her is psycho. Three, telling her to back off from a man who dumped you is, again, psycho. Ergo, you are psycho.”
“He loves me,” she spat.
“If he loved you, when he’s in a hospital bed, whacked out on the tail end of anesthesia and intravenous pain meds, why did he ask for me?”
She flinched.
Okay, so that was a low blow.
But the woman was barring me from my home, I’d slept on a couch and needed a serious stretch session (at least), and Knox broke up with her.
She started toward me, and I was thinking I was at one with the idea of a catfight in the parking lot of my apartment complex (though I’d lament the loss of the last half of my dirty chai if I had to chuck it) when the gate opened and Angels started streaming through.
This was excellent, because I knew I could take her, but I got the sense Cheyenne was a hair puller and that never felt good (yeah, you could take from that, when Dream and I were younger, we fought, and she was a hair puller).