Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“In this, I was. I should have listened. I seem to have a thing for inappropriate men.”
Case in point…you. Case in point, why I’m not pulling away right now. Mika would be delighted if she could see us. I should be horrified. But I don’t want to freeze to death.
Although, to be honest, I won’t. It’s summer, and the storm is blowing itself out. The rain isn’t pounding down so hard anymore, and the thunder hasn’t thundered again.
Cold or not, this isn’t right. Contrived or not, I can’t do this.
I break away, shrugging my sweater off to wring it out. It might not help, but it gives me something to do with my hands. I make myself busy with it for a good few minutes while I try to sort out the mess in my head and the burning tingles in my ovaries.
Which totally reminds me that my nipples are acting out.
I slap the cold, wet, and gross sweater back on, pulling it across my chest and holding it there.
Rowleigh goes back to giving a good poker face, though his clothes can’t. They’re pressed against his skin in a pseudo-naked sort of outline that makes my mouth go bone dry. I quickly tear my eyes away and focus on the piano behind him.
“Anyway, I don’t have mommy issues. My parents are really very nice. I’m an only child, so they have high expectations. I can’t help that I am not a carbon copy of them, and I know that. I’ve made peace with the shitty feelings it used to give me.”
Most of the time, I’m past it. It just sucks when it crops back up in the present. It’s like dredging up the snowball from my past, and over the years, it keeps rolling into a bigger snowball, and now, to get to the top to hurtle over the other side, it’s like climbing a mountain.
A shit mountain.
“Would it make me a terrible person to say that I’d like to experience living by giving your parents a good dressing down about having unreasonable expectations that make you feel terrible?”
I’m not going to lose it. I’m not. My eyes are not burning, my nose is not tickling, and my throat is not closing up.
Fuck.
I bite my lip to keep from crying. Or laughing. It could be either at this point. I study my waterlogged flats. They’re going to chafe like a mother. Like my mother. The way she…okay, never mind. That’s overkill.
“Thanks for not making this any worse than it is. I promise I’m a better wedding planner than I am at finding things to prove to you that life is worth living.”
“No.” He grasps the railing and leans up against it as the rain slows and dribbles off the roof in cascades harder than it’s driving down. “If I had to be stuck in a storm with anyone, I’m glad it’s with you.”
Neither of us knows what to do with that amount of honesty.
“Why hotels?” I ask. It’s more of a distraction question.
A distraction to my messy brain and ovaries as they are currently thinking about going on a march for their rights to demand access to this sinfully hot, panty-melting, sort of sweet, taco-hating man with a hidden heart of gold.
“They were perfect,” he answers, but his pitch is off. His left eye twitches, and his knuckles turn white on the railing.
I’ve annoyed him with the question.
Wait, nope. Nope, that’s not it at all.
Poof. His legs give out like they’ve been turned into butter by hidden river fairies, and he sags down to the cement floor, his legs crisscrossed at awkward angles.
“Oh my god!” I scramble over and throw myself down in a soggy heap. My hair drips water down my forehead and nose when I lean over Rowleigh and smack my cold palm to his forehead.
He’s not hot. He hasn’t developed pneumonia in six point nine seconds. He could have been feeling off before he got here. He could be tired, stressed, overworked, or underfed, and all those could contribute to exhaustion. Just because he’s crazy rich doesn’t mean he takes care of himself.
Underfed.
Fuck’s sake.
“Did you not eat all day in anticipation of the delicious feast tonight?”
He shakes his head. His hand slides out from behind him, searching for the railing again, even as his eyes roll back, and he mutters something I can’t catch.
“No, no, nope. Just stay sitting. Hey.” I cup his cheek, but that doesn’t get him, so I lightly smack the side of his face. It sounds and looks worse than it is. His head jars to the side, flopping like a wet noodle, which makes my heart sink in terror. Beads of water roll down from his soaked hair. “Don’t try and get up. I need you to answer me. Is this an I’m extremely low on blood sugar because I haven’t eaten all day and I’m utterly famished thing or is something else extremely wrong?”