Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Truthfully, I couldn’t do that to Boone, Sawyer, or my sister.
Which was why I was still here fighting.
“It’ll be okay,” Eddy whispered.
I swallowed hard. “I know.”
But it wasn’t.
At some point in the last month, Gail had seen Sawyer’s helping me as an attack against her. An ununited front was not acceptable, and she made it her life mission to terrorize me.
She had our water turned off. She called the city on us. She tried to get me expelled from school. She had the doctor recommend abortion at nearly every visit. She stalked me. She refused to ever let Boone be alone with me. She made my life a living hell.
And the final straw was the night she’d come to my apartment and shoved me. Shoved me so hard that my back had hit the wall and she’d pointed in my face and said, “You’ll regret this.”
I did.
One
The most dangerous drug I know has a heartbeat.
—Boone’s secret thoughts
Boone
Present day
Have you ever seen something you wanted so badly that you thought “I’d kill to have that?”
“Are you even listening to me, Bartholomew?”
Even if she’d said my name like a curse, it was still better than not hearing it at all.
Not to mention, she was the only one who could get away with using my given name without me getting irrationally angry.
She was the thing I’d kill for. The person I’d die for. The person that I’d lie, cheat, and steal for. She was THE person. Yet, she looked at me like I’d ruined her world.
And I guess I had.
It was my fault that I hadn’t believed her.
It was also my fault that I didn’t fight harder for her.
There were years of bitterness between us. There were things I couldn’t change. There were things that I wouldn’t change.
I was a different person than the one she left behind at sixteen.
Smarter, I would say.
Scarier.
More jaded.
More fucked up than anyone even knew.
“I’m listening,” I promised. “I’m just not caring.”
That was a lie.
I cared a whole lot about her.
Yet, she would never believe me if I told her that.
She sighed. “Come on, Bart. You can just take me home.”
“You don’t have a home.”
She paused. “I have an apartment.”
I looked at her. “What?”
“The one your dad gave me. I still use it,” she murmured softly.
That was news to me. I’d thought, when she left for college, that she’d left everything behind. Including me.
It was surprising to me that she still had the apartment.
Not only because my dad had given it to her, and she’d left anything Windsor-related behind. But because having an apartment here meant that she felt like she might come back.
“No,” I decided. “You’re not going home. You’re coming to my place.”
She sneered at me. “And run into your mother? No thank you.”
“I haven’t lived with my mother for years, and you know it.”
She sniffed and looked away.
Then started to hiccup.
It was just cute enough that I forgot what a bad idea it was to be taking her to my place.
I should be staying as far away from her as possible.
I should be getting ready for work tomorrow. Or possibly checking on my patients that were staying overnight.
I should be dropping her off and never looking back.
Yet, I did none of those things.
I further dug my own grave by drinking a beer with her when I got home.
Then taking a shot.
Followed shortly by another, and another, and another.
By the time we got to the worst decision of the night, neither one of us was in the position to say no.
And, like always, that decision changed the course of our lives.
I just wouldn’t know it for quite some time.
Two
Don’t judge me by my grocery cart. You have no idea what kind of emotions I’m trying to eat away.
—Nettie to Eddy
Nettie
Four months later
I walked up the length of his walk, nerves attacking my belly, with an entire plan.
I was going to march in there and tell him that I was pregnant.
I was going to tell him what my plan was for the foreseeable future.
I was going to…
My phone dinged with the sound that I reserved for the urgent emails from the Miami Sunrays, and I wondered if it was another hostile email from my team manager or the team owner.
The door opened and Boone came out in a pair of worn blue jeans, a white t-shirt that fit him like a glove, work boots that had seen better days, and a black ball cap that I’d given to him the day we’d found out that he was going to be a father.
His eyes, dark and hooded, were focused wholly on me.
He and I took one look at each other, and it was as if we couldn’t stop the gravitational pull.
He took two long steps toward me at the same time I took three much smaller ones toward him, and then we were in each other’s arms.