Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
The blonde was exiting the plane with her purse over her shoulder. When her eyes met mine, I crooked a finger at her. She was going to get more than my cock in her mouth. I had a condom in my truck. I needed to fuck her and remind myself how good it was to fuck who I wanted. Variety was better than just one.
“Yeah,” she replied, sounding embarrassed.
“All right, you satisfied my curiosity. I’ve got someone waiting on me. I need to go,” I told her.
“Okay,” she replied.
The way my hand tightened on the phone when the desire to keep talking to her fought against me had me ending the call without a goodbye. It was rude, but fuck if I was going to allow my cock to screw up the best relationship I’d ever had.
Thirteen
Noa
She was dead.
I stared at the wall as a numbness began to spread through me.
Dead. I couldn’t even say the word out loud.
Laying my phone down on the mattress, I wondered if I should call someone. Who? I knew nothing about her life. Not now or ever really. My eyes were dry. There was no surge of emotion. Did that mean I was a bad person? She hadn’t been a good mother, but she’d still given me life. That deserved something. A shred of grief. Possibly a tear or maybe a sob.
I glanced around the room, waiting on it to hit.
Nothing happened. Just the numbness.
I should call Jellie.
No, it was four in the morning. I didn’t want to wake her up. She would want me to though. But … but I didn’t want to talk about it. She’d ask me questions, and I’d have to repeat all I’d been told.
I dropped my gaze to my phone. I could text Ransom. But after he’d hung up abruptly two days ago during our first-ever phone conversation, he’d not texted or called since. I was trying to not take it personally. We often went days, even a week without texting. But he’d called. And he was reading my book. Dread, embarrassment, humiliation—all kinds of emotions hit with that thought. Proof I could feel.
I felt a lot where Ransom Carver was concerned.
Where my mother’s death was concerned, I had nothing.
I couldn’t even manage shame for not feeling anything.
My mother’s death, having to pack up and go to Madison, handle her burial or cremation, clean out her trailer—all the things I should be working out, but I shoved them aside, as if they were of no importance, to focus on my telling Ransom that I watched porn.
He had gotten off the phone with me fast after that.
No, I couldn’t text him. If he’d kept reading, then he was probably putting some distance between us since he now knew the things I’d fantasized doing to him or with him.
Flopping back down on the bed, I closed my eyes. The trilogy that had been a bestseller and entertained romance readers everywhere should be something I was proud of. Not something I regretted.
Yet … here I was … wanting the same boy I’d wanted ten years ago and worrying that I’d done something to lose what I never had.
Funny how I hadn’t noticed that when I needed to talk to someone, Arden hadn’t come to mind. Not once had I texted or called him with something. It was always Jellie I called, and then if it was a topic that I wasn’t hiding from Ransom, I’d text him about it. But never Arden.
Why had I said yes to him again?
Sighing heavily, I sat back up and went to my closet to pull out a suitcase. I’d call Jellie tomorrow. She’d want to know. She might even want to come to Madison to help me. Not that I wanted her to see the trailer I’d grown up in or the condition it was most likely in now. I might put off that call. Just until I got there and saw what I was dealing with.
There was no way I was staying in that trailer. I’d get a hotel room. Maybe I should book my flight and hotel first. Then pack. God, I couldn’t believe I had to go back and face this. It had been easier to pretend she didn’t exist when she was alive. Block out the past and the hurt. Her death was going to force me to face it all again. Remember.
A slight ache began in my chest, and I paused. Was that it? The grief? I stood there, waiting, letting it sink in, and the pain spread. Through my memories, my childhood, the mom I’d longed for but never had, my childish desire to please her once, and with it all came the grief. But not for the woman who had died. But for the little girl who had never been loved.