Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 35197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 176(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 176(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
And there's no switching tables now.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER
ONE
Theo
My skin is feverish.
Sweat is forming a pattern on the front of my gray T-shirt.
I can’t seem to uncurl my fists long enough to pick up the coffee mug and bring the rim to my mouth for a sip. No one else in this café is having difficulty performing basic tasks, like consuming their beverage. In fact, they’re multitasking while they drink. Having witty conversations, reading, typing on laptops.
All the clicking and laughter and scratching of pens, chair legs, skin…it culminates in a marching battalion of sounds to assault my ears. Ears that haven’t heard anything but silence…or screaming…in so long, they can’t cope. I can’t cope.
I can’t do this.
I thought I was ready for the outside world, but I’m not.
I don’t even have a cell phone yet because all the icons and apps were so confusing, but trivial at the same time. Unfamiliar like everything else.
My hands are jerky, sweat rolling down my spine while I fumble with my wallet, taking out a ten-dollar bill and wedging it in between the salt and pepper shakers. Is ten enough? Has the cost of coffee gone up since I’ve been imprisoned? Why didn’t I think to look at the menu more closely?
A man two tables away raises his voice to ask the waitress for the check and my skin shrivels like hot plastic. He’s a civilian. A civilian. But all I hear is a person in distress. Another soldier being tortured on the other side of the wall. Distant explosions. Gunfire. Soon-to-be dead men screaming for their mothers. All absorbed into the blackness of my cell. My sweltering, airless hole carved into rock somewhere so far removed from this fancy coffee shop, it shouldn’t even be allowed in the same universe.
Taking a deep inhale, I close my eyes and recite the directions back to my new apartment, reminding myself not to glance right or left on the way home, to keep my attention locked on the path in front of me, lest I see something that triggers my severe PTSD and causes a scene. Sort of like in the airport upon landing back in Chicago, when I thought the rumble of the baggage claim belt starting, a horn blaring three times in succession, meant there was incoming fire.
Those people didn’t need to be hustled to safety. They were safe, normal Americans, like the people surrounding me right now. Sometimes my brain forgets, though. It forgets everything but the fear and memories and horror of the last four years.
I push my chair back to leave, but I never get the chance to stand up.
A girl sits down across from me and…
The grating noises in the coffee shop fade into a low, thumping rhythm. I don’t realize right away that it’s my heart I’m hearing. I haven’t heard it do anything but pound with painful adrenaline in so long, I barely recognize the sound.
She’s short.
Young.
In round, tortoiseshell glasses. Beautiful brown eyes look back at me from the other side of that glass, bewildered and inquisitive all at once. Her dark hair is twisted up on the top of her head in a bun, but I can see light, golden strands woven throughout the messy masterpiece. She parts her lips to say something, and thankfully, she doesn’t, because I wouldn’t have heard it, anyway. Goddamn, that fucking mouth. Supple. Full. Kissed with a light gloss that catches the golden light above the table. The bow of her upper lip is unnaturally high, and it allows me to see the tiny gap between her front teeth.
I’m staring.
I can’t stop staring and my prolonged attention is making her blush.
She drops her head forward on a shy, breathy laugh.
“You’re…” She peers up at me through her eyelashes. “You’re Kevin?”
Kevin. Kevin. Who the fuck is Kevin?
“I don’t usually let my co-workers set me up on dates. I don’t usually go on dates at all, to be honest.” Slowly, she starts to unwind a light, tan and white striped scarf from around her delicate throat, which is circled by a thin necklace. A gold charm in the shape of a bow sits right on that little notch above her collarbone and my mouth begins to salivate. What is happening to me? “I just…um…”
Dear God, her voice is so…innocently husky.
My cock gives a heavy thrum. For the first time in years.
I feel the pulsation in my throat and nearly choke on the unexpectedness of it.
Beneath the table, I dig my thumbs into my knees. Breathe.
“Well, I’m trying to be more of a yes person,” she continues. “I always say no to happy hour. When I have vacation days at work, I never use them for anything but…”
“But what?” I ask, desperate for her to keep speaking.
My voice visibly startles her. It’s no wonder. I sound like I just crawled out of a grave. In a lot of ways, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. Starting with being in this coffee shop.