Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
She gives me a pleased look, lips quirking, eyes twinkling. “Well, you’re an acquired taste, aren’t you?”
I laugh. Maybe I am.
She bites into the toast, hums in pleasure, then meets my gaze and says, “And I guess I like you, Lake.”
And that’s it. That’s just it. Might as well wave the white flag. I don’t deserve her. I’m shit at relationships. But I’m pretty sure I am falling head over fucking heels for my fake girlfriend. And I want to tell her “Then acquire me.”
But that is a thought that needs a strategy, a careful plan—a strategy for convincing this incredible woman to go on a real date with me.
She motions to the bread. “Which one’s your first choice?”
I pick up the one with banana and peanut butter and take a bite where she left off. After I chew and finish it, I say, “I guess I just wanted to get a little closer to you.”
I lean in to give her a kiss across the table, when there’s a soft thud, the scrabble of paws, then a naughty Siamese cat skidding across the table, hell-bent on our food.
Thor lands right at the edge of the plate, then meows at the top of his lungs and does that cat thing—he freaks the fuck out. Spins around, knocking the plate off the table, leaping in the other direction and racing off, peanut butter and honey in his paws as the plate clatters and breaks.
It all happens so fast that I don’t move. I just look at the remains of the plate on the floor, then Remy, then the broken plate. And we both burst into laughter.
“I guess maybe that was the point of number four for Lacey,” Remy says. “You never know what might happen when you make breakfast together.”
We clean up, and when we’re done with breakfast number two, Remy wipes her hands on a towel, then her gaze lands on her bag, hanging on a chair at the table. “Wait. There’s something I forgot to show you.” She hurries to the bag and pulls out her phone. “I took this picture the other day, and things got crazy.”
She grabs her phone, flicks her finger across the camera roll, and then stops. “It’s a hummingbird,” she says, then shows me the picture. “I saw it the day we came back from Evergreen Falls. It made me think of you.”
She’s always doing things for me. My heart acts up again. But it’s not just thundering. It’s expanding, and it’s a little uncomfortable. It tries to take up space that I haven’t allotted for it, and I don’t want to give in to this unexpected expansion. I don’t want to give in to the way it’s threatening to overtake the other organs, but the heart wants what the heart fucking wants, and it wants her.
This woman who took a hummingbird photo for me, not for the first time, not for the second time, not even for the third time. She’s been sending them to me whenever she sees them. And she did it again.
I stare at the pic as this hazy, heady feeling spreads through my cells.
“That one’s a ruby-throated hummingbird,” I say, my throat feeling tight.
“It’s so pretty,” she says, gazing at the picture.
“Like a jewel,” I say, but I’m staring at her. This woman I want more with.
“You were right. I like hummingbirds,” she says softly.
“Me too,” I say, a rough whisper.
There are other things I want to say, like go out with me, and let’s give this a shot. But as I’m trying to form those words, she’s busying herself with taking out the list from the bag, then the pouch she keeps it safe in. She mimes checking number four—make breakfast together and clean it up—off. “And then there were two.”
The mood shifts. It feels somber as I look down at the list and the two remaining items—number three, which is camp under the stars, and then…number five.
And that’s when I know. If I want anything more with her, anything that might feel remotely real, there’s something else I need to do. Something I need to say. Something I’ve held onto for a long, long time.
I didn’t think now would be the moment to say it, but as I’m sitting here with her doing something as pedestrian as having breakfast and cleaning it up, I’m sure there’s no time like the present.
Since this is number five: Share a secret.
I look at the list, then at the woman across from me.
“I wasn’t in love with Heather when she died. We were getting divorced.”
42
MY PROTECTOR
REMY
Even if I had my Notes, Complaints, and Existential Crises notebook handy to map out potential outcomes of this conversation, I’d never have picked that one. That Lake and his late wife were divorcing before her motorcycle crash. But he did tell me when we played The Naked Truth that he wouldn’t have dated her again.