Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 102903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
I don’t even know what to say at this point, no matter how driven I am to comfort her. She’s right. The whole thing is a monstrosity.
A phone sex virgin, and two guys in a van.
I swear, I can’t make this shit up.
11
Hannah
3:00 p.m.
My brain feels like cold, mushy scrambled eggs.
When I started to hyperventilate in the van, Dom encouraged me to lean forward and put my head between my knees. I did that until I was able to sit back up without feeling like my breaths were going to catapult me to outer space, but I’m still a shell of the girl I once was.
There are some things that, once done, can’t be reversed, and I’m afraid verbally stroking a cock and balls nineteen times a day is one of them.
“Do you want a cigarette?” Dominic asks, his deep voice cutting through the haze as he squats in front of me, those intense blue-green eyes locking on mine.
I shake my head. “No. I don’t smoke.” As much as I’d love to take comfort in something right now, the only thing smoking would do is turn me green. Then I’d be a green virgin phone sex operator, and really, I don’t think that makes anything better.
“That’s good,” he says. “Because I don’t smoke, either, so I don’t have any cigarettes.”
Shane snorts behind him, but Dom keeps his eyes on me as I break down again, dropping my head into my hands. “What am I even doing with my life? I’m twenty-five years old, for shit’s sake, and I’m a virgin? I mean, how sad is that?” I swallow hard against the emotion clogging my throat and sit up straight again, pushing my back into the bench cushion. “I don’t date. I don’t go out. I don’t drink or do drugs. Up until two months ago, I went to work at Alliance Medical doing data entry, and I went home to take care of my mom. Her caretaker, Lovie, is the only person I talk to on a regular basis, and my mom is getting worse and worse by the day. I know I could sell the house, but she’s genuinely comfortable there, and it’s the last thing I even have of my dad’s. I . . . I don’t know if I can keep doing this, but I don’t know if I can stop either. I need the money, desperately, because every time I take out more money on the reverse mortgage, we just get deeper in the hole,” I ramble, venting damn near fifteen years of trauma on the poor guys.
Shane looks on silently from the back of the van, but Dom lifts a hand, settling it on my dress-covered knee and squeezing. Warmth radiates through the thin fabric, spreading to my skin and making me acutely, unexpectedly aware of him. It feels unsettlingly intimate—a stark contrast to my hermitic / home care–providing / almost-homeless identity crisis—and the urge to cry wells up in swollen balloons behind my eyes. But I force a deep breath to hold it back.
“Okay, look,” he says, his voice steady but somehow soothing, in a way that makes me want to lean into him. “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to take a beat so you can get yourself together, and then I’m going to go back in there with you, and I’m going to coach you through a call.”
“Excuse me?” I blink. “You’re going to do what?”
He chuckles softly, shaking his head and clearing his throat. “Yeah. I know. It’s going to be awkward as hell, and we’re going to have a few stumbles, but I’m a very talented man, Hannah. And I do what it takes to make a situation work.”
Shane guffaws, and Dom holds up a middle finger over his shoulder as his only answer.
“We’re going to get through this,” he encourages me. The way his smile quirks at the corner pulls my attention, and for a second, I can’t look away. “And you’re going to get through your shit too. You’re tough. A hell of a lot tougher than I’d be if I was facing what you are.”
“You think so?” I search his handsome face for a sign of bullshit, but I don’t find anything except a genuine and tender smile.
“Oh yeah,” Dom says, his confidence clear. “You’re doing your best, and you’re doing it with the best tools at your disposal right now.” He shrugs. “Let’s work with what we’ve got, okay?”
“Okay.” Maybe I can do this. “Do you have any suggestions I should start with on my calls? I mean, what are you hearing from me that’s tipping you off?”
“Probably could stop with the slow-motion words.” His face is open and friendly.
“And the rhyming,” Shane chimes in from behind, making my ears heat.
“Let me get this straight.” I raise my eyebrows in outright shock and embarrassment. “Not only have I been talking in rhyme, but I’ve also been doing it in slow motion?”