Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 94883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
But she kissed me back.
That’s the hope kernel I hold onto as I head inside, dripping puddles through the kitchen on my way back to the ballroom to find my tux coat. She kissed me back like she’s been dying to for seven and a half months. Like she’s been living with the same ache, the same certainty that we’re meant to crash into each other until it sticks.
That isn’t goodbye…because she didn’t say goodbye.
She just ran.
But she ran last time, too, and she still asked me to dance and gave me one of the best nights of my life. And we barely said a word to each other. Imagine how much fun we’ll have when our smart mouths get in on the action?
Nah, this isn’t the end. This is just the beginning of whatever chaotic fuckery we’re going to get up to together.
I’m certain of this.
Certain as I find my tux coat, share one last root beer with Torrance—I stopped drinking earlier, so I could sober up to drive—and grab a giant piece of cake from the “take home some food” table. Certain as I make plans to numb my pain with buttercream icing and Saturday Night Live reruns in my living room as soon as I get home.
Certain as the valet pulls my truck around and I press a twenty into his hand, figuring he deserves a reward for being stuck at work at nearly three in the morning.
“Thanks, man,” he says, grinning as he tucks the bill into his vest pocket. “You headed downtown?”
I shake my head. “Nah. Suburbs, dude. I’m a baller who loves grass and piddling in my garden.”
He laughs as he nods. “Cool. Safer right now, too. The roads are starting to flood down there. Management wanted us to tell anyone headed that way to take the long way around or make plans to stay somewhere else tonight. The storm is dumping rain crazy fast. Last I checked, there was a flood warning for half the city until eight or nine tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks for letting me know.” I circle around to the driver’s side, dread hardening my stomach.
I don’t live downtown.
But I know someone who does…
Makena lives in the back of her restaurant. She sleeps on a little sleeping mat tucked into a shelf under the paper products because she was too fucking stubborn to give up on her dream when the bank refused to give her a business loan, so long as she was still paying rent on an apartment. When Elly told me the story, it was clearly intended to illustrate how obstinate Makena can be, and encourage me to come to terms with the fact that her lips might never again meet mine. Instead, it only made me more certain that she’s my pigheaded soul mate.
Together, there’s probably nothing we couldn’t do.
Unless she’s swept away by a flood…
Pulling over to the side of the road, where the water is already six inches deep, I check the weather report to see the area near Makena’s restaurant in bright red. It’s an area I know well, not far from the stadium, full of office buildings.
An area rescue teams will likely head to last, since allegedly no one lives there…
“She probably couldn’t get home,” I mutter aloud. “If it’s flooding now, it was flooding forty minutes ago. She probably called a cab. The driver probably said, ‘I can’t take you there, weirdo—there’s a flood,’ and now, she’s shacked up with a friend somewhere on higher ground.”
Or she’s not, and about to be in serious fucking trouble.
And just like that, I’m off, tires spinning as I head back into the heart of the storm, hoping my truck is lifted high enough to stay above the water.
If she’s already safe and sound, and I end up stranded on a roof somewhere because I tried to white knight it for a woman who ran away from me—twice—I’m going to feel like an idiot. But if something happens to her, my heart will be ripped out of my fucking chest.
A man can live with bruised pride.
He can’t live without a heart.
Chapter
Two
MAKENA
I’m an idiot.
A soaking wet, mascara-streaked, nipples-still-hard-from-kissing-Parker idiot.
The cab drops me at the curb outside my building, and I splash through ankle-deep water in my kitten heels to get to the door, cursing beneath my breath.
This rain is really getting excessive. It was hot when Parker and I were kissing in it, but now it’s just wet and cold and making my toes slimy in my shoes.
Fuck.
I kissed Parker.
Again.
In the rain.
And it was crazy hot, and his cock felt like something truly special through his tuxedo pants, and he saw my nipple, and I wanted him to see a lot more. But I can’t sleep with a kid I used to babysit! That would be too weird, even for me, a person who enjoys weird.