Total pages in book: 19
Estimated words: 17879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 89(@200wpm)___ 72(@250wpm)___ 60(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 17879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 89(@200wpm)___ 72(@250wpm)___ 60(@300wpm)
“Can you grab me a bottle?”
I freeze at the sound of her voice as pure ice clogs my veins. Maybe I’ll have a heart attack and drop dead right now and avoid the whole thing. That sounds like the preferred outcome. Grabbing a bottle of water, I turn and slide it across the island to her. Maeve is perched on one of the stools, eyeing me closely.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Liar. What’s wrong?”
I sigh and take a drink from the bottle of water in my hand. Setting it down, I take a long, steadying breath and let it out slowly. When I feel composed, I raise my head and meet her hazel eyes. And as I do, I feel my heart lurch in my chest. It’s not just lust I feel for this girl. I can’t explain what it is exactly since I don’t know what it is myself, but there’s more there under the surface. Which only compounds the problem.
“What we did was wrong, love,” I tell her. “We shouldn’t have—”
“Why not?”
It’s such a simple question, but it doesn’t have a simple answer. “Well… for one thing… you’re my best friend’s daughter,” I tell her. “I’ve known you since you were just a little girl.”
“I’m not a little girl now.”
“No,” I say with a rueful grin. “No, you are not.”
“Meaning, I’m an adult,” she says. “Capable of making my own choices. Including who I choose to sleep with.”
“But your father—”
“Doesn’t get to dictate who I sleep with,” she says hotly. “And if I remember correctly, you weren’t objecting at the time.”
Her face is red, her eyes are narrow and shimmer with tears. I didn’t think it possible for me to feel like a bigger asshole than I did, but apparently, I was wrong.
“You’re right, I didn’t object. And maybe I should have,” I tell her. “It’s not that I didn’t want to, Maeve. It’s just that…”
My voice trails off. She stares at me, waiting but I don’t know how to finish that thought. She sniffs back her tears and sits up straighter, her back straight, anger and hurt etched into her soft, beautiful features.
“I wanted it to happen, Myles. And on some level, you must have wanted it to happen too,” she says. “I’ve been in love with you since I was a girl—”
“Maeve, stop,” I plead. “We can’t do this. I’ve known you since, like you said, you were a girl. It’s just… it’s wrong. What happened between us can’t happen again.”
Her eyes grow wide, and she gapes at me. “Are you serious?”
“I care about you, Maeve. I truly do,” I tell her. “But I care about your father too. And if he finds out what happened…”
That’s a sentence I know how to finish, but I don’t. What I said is more than enough. She knows how awkward things will be if her father finds out we had sex and I have to believe on some level, she doesn’t want that smoke either.
“You felt something the same as I did, Myles. You can’t deny it. I felt it,” she says. “And I can see it in your eyes. Why are you denying it?”
“Because it can’t happen again,” I tell her. “We can’t happen.”
“Why?”
“Because your father would never forgive me.”
“It’s my choice.”
“But it’s his choice whether to be my friend or not. And if he knows we slept together, he’s going to choose to not be anymore.”
She levels her hazel eyes on me. “You didn’t deny feeling something for me.”
I throw my hands in the air and let out a breath of frustration. But I can’t say anything because I’m not going to lie to her. Yes, when we were together in the pool, I felt something for her. I still feel something for her. And that’s the most bloody confounding part of this whole thing. Despite what I feel, I can never act on it simply because of the situation it would put me in with Howie. He would never forgive me.
“What I feel or don’t feel is irrelevant, Maeve,” I say. “This can’t happen again.”
She opens her mouth but before she can say anything more, I turn and walk out of the kitchen. The sound of her crying chases me up the stairs and not even closing my bedroom door can shut the sound of it out of my mind completely. I’ve never felt like such an asshole before in all my life as I do right now.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Bloody fucking hell.”
7
MAEVE
“How’d things go down at the office today?” Myles asks.
My dad nods. “A thousand little fires that needed to be put out. The usual.”
“That’s why I got out when I did,” Myles says. “I’m not much of a fireman.”
“Yeah, well, I’m starting to think you were the smart one.”
“You should take your foot off the gas, mate. Live a little.”