Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 119184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 596(@200wpm)___ 477(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 596(@200wpm)___ 477(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
“No rush. I’m just glad to have a chance. I’m going to make this work, Dr. Ezzie,” I assure her.
Her smile looks worn but genuine. “If the financials didn’t matter, Lena, I’d hand you the keys tomorrow.”
It’s pretty late by the time I get home.
My feet ache like usual, and I smell like wet dog meets fishy canned cat food. It’s been one of those days where the long shower will be mandatory.
But first, hot drink or microwave dinner?
No one ever said I’m a good cook.
I’ve just put the kettle on the stove for tea when there’s a loud knock at the door.
Oof.
Normally, that’s Granny Lark, the sweet old lady up the street and my bestie’s grandmother, wanting to catch up with me. But it’s late, and she’s normally bedding down after eight o’clock.
This weird psychic sense in my brain tells me not to open the door. Turn the lights out. Pretend I’m not home.
But what if it is Gran and she needs a hand with something? Wouldn’t be the first time she had a few bags of soil or mulch delivered and she needs my help to lift them due to her knee injury.
I’m not feeling sensible tonight. I’m tired and grouchy, and my feet are barking like angry huskies. It doesn’t sink in that it could be dangerous until I throw the door open and see my worst nightmare.
Effing Harry.
Just as tall and obnoxious as I remember. That long waxed mustache that should’ve stayed in the last century gives him a cartoon-villain vibe.
“Lena.” He bares his teeth in what might be considered a smile on another planet.
Not here. Not now.
My body stiffens, bristling to face the threat before my brain catches up.
“What are you doing here?” I spit, making sure I sprawl out to block the doorway.
“Hello to you too, doll. Aren’t you going to invite me in for old times’ sake?”
What is he, a vampire?
“No. What do you want, Harry?”
“Aw, jeez. I’m just here to talk.” His grimace-smile widens.
“Then talk.” It takes monster restraint not to add asshole to the end.
Maybe that’s why he stares at me like he wants to feed me into a wood chipper.
Believe me, it’s mutual.
When he sees I’m serious and I’m not budging, he folds his arms and lets the plastic smile drop a little. A good thing, so I’m not blinded by his overwhitened teeth.
I blink, a little too fast.
“I spoke to our friend Dr. Ezzie earlier,” he says. My bravado deflates like a dying old balloon.
Crap.
I should’ve known the only reason he’d show up is to pressure me or rub his disgusting triumph in my face.
I frown. “How’d you even know I’d be here?”
“Oh, let’s not worry about that. You’re a smart girl, and it’s your mom’s old house. Wow, you haven’t changed a thing, have you?” He leans in closer.
I get a whiff of his cologne, so strong it knocks me back.
Or is it the past sweeping in like an ice-cold wave?
God.
There’s a reason people say scent provokes the strongest memories. I think this smell throws me through time and space. Even if he’s older and meaner and richer now, he still wears that same damn fragrance.
Suddenly, I’m nineteen again, serving ice cream at Raven Swirls, my mom’s summer pop-up shop, and getting painfully shy when the best-looking man on earth shows up twice a week.
He always tips more than the cost of his cone. He makes me laugh with his crazy, antiquated mustache and his backward ballcap that says “Give A Damn.”
I’m twenty, my heart racing in his arms, listening to him tell me he loves me and he’s sorry if it hurt when he took my virginity. He just needs it “a little rough” to get off.
I’m almost twenty-one, and he’s outside my apartment, hurling a rock at my window. It scares me when it hits and cracks the glass. Telling me how “fucking brain dead” I am to get worked up over something so stupid. He always gets black-out drunk on his father’s yacht with his friends because he knows “how to live,” and I need to just deal with it.
I’m twenty-two and still anxious. I’m expecting to come home to his ridiculous mustache twitching as he screams at me and breaks another plate in my house, even though he’s long gone.
I find one of his old shirts in the back of my closet. It still smells like him.
I burn it in the old grill out back, crying.
The full force of emotion almost makes me slam the door in his face, and I have to remind myself to breathe.
He doesn’t have that hold on me anymore.
I’m not the same dumb college girl, and I’m sure as hell not his little “doll.”
“Dr. Ezzie,” I mutter, playing dumb. “What about her?”
“She told me you want to buy her out. At first, I laughed my ass off. Then I realized she was serious.” He spreads his hands and inhales sharply. “So, yeah. Let’s not make this personal, okay? I bet you weren’t planning on dropping your life savings on that dump until I showed up with the funds and an actual plan.”