Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
A knock rattles my door before it pushes open.
“Still moping?” Sage’s voice. She steps in without waiting for an invitation, her dark hair twisted into a bun and a book tucked under her arm.
I groan. “Don’t you knock like a normal person?”
She smirks. “We’re family. Privacy doesn’t exist.” She sits at the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle me. She flicks her gaze to the scar. “Looks cool. You should keep it. Chicks dig scars.”
“I think I’ll let my hair grow back,” I say, “but thanks. I think.”
She sighs. “You scared the hell out of us, you know.”
“I scared myself.” My voice is quiet.
“You’re alive.” She scratches Zach behind his ears. “Thanks to this amazing canine. That’s what matters.”
Alive. But not whole.
Not without her.
“So, Henry…”
Here it comes.
“This thing. With Tabitha.”
“There’s no thing,” I say more sharply than I mean to.
She crosses her arms, her eyes narrowed. “Then why the big deal about having Mom call her?”
“What does it matter?” I scoff. “Mom said Tabitha’s not coming. Some big, can’t-miss opportunity at med school.”
Sage exhales, tilting her head. “Yeah. I heard.”
“It’s some kind of seminar,” I say, forcing nonchalance I don’t feel. “She’s a big-shot surgeon in the making. She can’t be bothered with me, and I can’t blame her after how I treated her.”
“You sound bitter.”
I look away. “I’m not.”
She raises a brow. “You are.”
I rake a hand through my hair and wince when my stitches pull. “She deserves her chance. She’s worked for it. I told her once we had no future, and she believed me. That’s on me.”
Sage studies me with her dark eyes that miss nothing. “What the hell happened between you two?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to.
She sighs, continues to pet Zach. “She’s a nice girl, Henry. Intelligent. Beautiful. And she fits in with this bunch. You could do a lot worse.”
Before I can reply, the door creaks again, and Mom slips in with a tray holding stew, biscuits, and iced tea sweating in a mason jar. She sets it on the nightstand like I’m a kid again, down with the flu.
“Mom, I’m allowed to leave the room to eat, you know.”
“I know. But I like taking care of you.” She smiles. “Besides, you’re too thin. This way I know you’re getting your meals.”
“I’ve been eating.”
“Not enough.” She fusses with the blanket at my feet. “Your color’s better, though.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She smiles faintly and glances at Sage. “Don’t stay too long. He needs rest.”
“I’m not made of glass,” I mutter.
“No,” Mom says, her eyes soft but fierce. “You’re made of stubbornness. Which is worse.”
Sage snorts. “Can’t argue with that.” She rises. “Eat your stew. Try not to mope too hard. And for the love of God, call Tabitha when you’re ready to stop being an idiot.”
She slips out before I can reply.
Mom lingers, smoothing the blanket at my feet. “Henry,” she says softly, “I know you think pushing people away will protect them. But it doesn’t. It just leaves you alone.” She kisses my forehead and leaves.
Her words cut deep because they’re true.
I sit in silence for a long time.
I can’t stop seeing her.
Tabitha, lying beside me. The warmth of her breath, the way she looked at me like I was worth saving.
And I let her walk away.
The stew cools while I stare at the wall. I should eat. I should nap. Instead I pull the past over me like a blanket and let it smother me.
Over a week ago now, but I remember every second like it was yesterday. In this room, we were frantic. But later, in her guest room…
I wanted to rip her clothes off right then and there and fuck her hard and fast, like we’d done before.
I was dying to. And I could have done it.
She wouldn’t have stopped me.
Her nipples were hard and protruding through the silky fabric of her dress.
Instead, though, I cracked open the door to her room, looked deep into those amber eyes, and said, “Please.”
And she nodded.
She nodded ever so slightly.
I squeeze my eyes shut and remember.
The slope of her shoulder, the tiny pulse at her throat, the warmth when I cupped her breast. I undressed her, kissed every inch of her gorgeous flesh. She begged me to go faster. I answered with a stubborn slowness that made both of us shiver.
I learned her breaths, quick and then quicker, learned the way her fingers splayed against my shoulders when I found the exact pressure that turned her body from tense to wildfire. I let the heat build like a storm. When she gasped and grabbed for me, when she said my name, the brokenness in me dropped away and there was only her, only the shape of how she fit against me.
I wanted—God, I wanted—to flip us hard, to chase the edge with the same ferocity we had before, to be rough enough to satisfy the part of both of us that liked our sex a little wild. But I kept a hand at her back and the other at her jaw, and I moved like we had all the time in the world.