Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 92547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
She smiled and murmured, “Yeah. She makes you a better person.”
Chloe seemed almost sad for me, though. And the last thing I needed was pity, especially from her. It was bad enough that I felt it everywhere I went in this town. Everyone knew about the single dad raising a little girl who had been abandoned by her mother. The looks I got. They were the same as the one Chloe was giving me right now, and I needed an out.
“Heading to shower,” I announced before leaving her standing there.
Once in the bathroom, I tried to decompress under the water. But all I could think about were Chloe’s eyes, Chloe’s face, Chloe’s lips. How damn beautiful she was. Fuck, I was hard up. Things hadn’t been going well with my girlfriend, Naomi, and me. It had been a while, to say the least. And that was mostly my own doing. But I stopped myself from relieving the tension here because I knew my imagination would go straight to Chloe. That would only make this situation worse.
After I showered, somehow managing to avert an orgasm, I stared at myself in the mirror, hesitant to venture back out there in case Chloe was still in the kitchen. I took my sweet time in the bathroom and then went to check on my daughter and tuck her in.
Effie closed the book she’d been reading. “Hey, Daddy.”
“You all ready for bed?” I sat at the edge of her mattress.
“Do you think Chloe’s going to be able to braid my hair in the morning?”
“I don’t know, baby.” I ruffled her hair. I wished Chloe hadn’t made that promise.
“Can you ask her?”
“No. She’s in her room for the night. I’ll try to figure out how to do it myself, okay?”
“You can’t. You already tried once, remember?”
“I didn’t try that hard. It was one time, and I hadn’t gotten any formal lessons. I’ll look up instructions before bed. I’m sure I can find a tutorial online.”
I’d stay up all damn night if I had to.
My daughter frowned. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
I chuckled. “Have faith in your dad, okay?”
“It’s not that you don’t mean well. You’re just…follicularly challenged.”
I chuckled again. “Follicularly? Did you make that up?”
“It’s a real word. Like hair follicles. Follicularly challenged means you can’t do hair. You can’t do hair.”
I bent down to kiss her on the cheek. “Try to get some sleep. We’ll get up a little early and figure it out.” Nothing like making promises you weren’t sure you could keep.
“Okay.” Effie sighed, placing her book on the nightstand and getting under the covers.
She didn’t believe in me when it came to this task, and she had no good reason to. Effie deserved better, but all I could do was try. I shut the light off in her room on my way out.
Later that evening, I set up my laptop on the kitchen counter while I prepared Effie’s lunch for the next day. I put on a YouTube tutorial about how to French braid and glanced over at it in between arranging items in her lunch box.
“What the fuck?” I muttered as I watched. “You’d need three hands for that shit.”
“Looks like we both had the same idea…” I heard Chloe say from behind me.
I turned, and she faced her cell phone toward me. “I was watching a tutorial, too.”
“You don’t need to worry. I’ll handle it.”
“Oh really?” she challenged. “It’s getting late. Could you do the braid right now if you had to?”
“Sure,” I lied.
She pulled the elastic from her ponytail and fluffed her hair out. “Prove it.”
Chapter 7
* * *
CHLOE
The look on his face was priceless. Evan knew damn well he needed practice.
I flipped one of the chairs around and straddled it. Looking over my shoulder, I chided, “Any time now, big guy…”
He took a seat behind me and let out a long breath that I felt at the back of my neck, the hairs there stiffening. After several seconds, Evan ran his hands through my hair to even it out. That brief touch sent what felt like a jolt of electricity through my body. While I couldn’t be certain, this might’ve been the only time he’d ever touched my hair. I couldn’t have predicted it would happen like this.
“Okay, I know you don’t really know how to do it yet. This isn’t about you proving anything,” I admitted. “But I figured you could practice on me until you get it right.”
Those words reminded me of how much I’d wanted to practice things on Evan way back in the day. I shook the thought from my head.
To my surprise, Evan didn’t argue. Instead, I felt his hands in my hair again, pulling sections as he followed along with the instructions in the online tutorial.
“Left over middle. Right over middle,” the instructor said. “Good job.”