Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 84952 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84952 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Larissa’s hand drops to my thigh again, and she gives it a gentle squeeze. The contact grounds me and gives me something to focus on—her.
“Anyone want dessert?” Lincoln asks as he gets up from the table. “You like cake, Hollis?”
“I love cake,” I say without taking my eyes off Larissa.
She smiles at me—a genuine gesture that’s void of pity. And I cling to that for dear life.
Ten
Larissa
The evening sky is inky with bright silver stars sparkling overhead. Hollis and I roll quietly through the outskirts of Savannah on our way back to my house.
I settle into my seat and try to relax.
Hollis turned on the radio as soon as we got into the car. Besides an occasional glance my way—a movement coupled with a smile that’s unmistakably softer than what I’m used to from him—he’s been focused on the road ahead.
In turn, I stare at his profile and try to figure out the man sitting beside me.
He’s a conundrum, a complexity that I can’t entirely unravel. I equivocate him with confidence and fun, but watching him tonight with the Landrys exposed another side of him different from his quick-witted levity.
His jaw is tense. The corners of his eyes crinkle as if the thoughts going through his head aren’t exactly welcome. His wild hair makes a show of just how many times he’s run his hands through it since we climbed in the car just a few minutes ago.
My thoughts are interrupted when he reaches up and turns down the music.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
A gentleness touches the severity of his features as he searches my eyes. I fight the urge to reach out and touch the side of his face.
I can’t do that. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate, but I’m positive it’s unwanted.
“I’m good,” I tell him. “Are you okay?”
He lets his gaze linger on me for a moment. Long enough to tell me he’s not totally okay.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” His tone is clipped. It’s not angry or frustrated, but the words are coated with a finality that doesn’t sit well with me.
It’s a lie—a white one, maybe. But he knows I suspect something is amiss with him.
What do I do? Pretend I don’t see it and just let it go? Wouldn’t that make me a jerk?
“I don’t mean to be rude or anything,” I say carefully, “but you don’t seem fine.”
He regrips the steering wheel. “And I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but you don’t seem to know how to stop asking questions.” He looks at me over his shoulder, a small grin playing against his lips. “Stop pressing me, and I will be fine.”
I grin back at him. “You obviously don’t know me well enough to know that pressing is my forte.”
He drags his eyes away from mine and settles them ahead once again. “I guess that’s a good thing about our situation then, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we don’t have to know each other well enough for anything.”
He’s doing to me what he did to the Landrys. He’s giving me enough of an answer to feel like he was a participant in this conversation when, in reality, he’s just changing the subject.
I reach up and turn the radio completely off. “No, I suppose we don’t have to know each other at all. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know things about you.”
He half-laughs, half-snorts. “Why?”
“Why what?” I ask, my feathers getting ruffled.
“Why do you want to know things about me? Like, I get why you wanna know my name and that I’m not a serial killer. And if you are curious about my bill of health—I’m clean.”
The cocky little grin he casts me is supposed to make me think about something other than interrogating him.
It works.
Lucky for me, I’m strong enough to stay somewhat focused on the task at hand. Only a small part of my brain watches Hollis’s fingers tap the steering wheel and wonders what they would feel like on my bare skin.
“Wow. If you’d given me your birthday, you would’ve shared almost as much as a prisoner of war.”
He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. He’s amused, though he’s trying desperately not to show it. “Why do you need to know anything else about me?”
“I don’t know,” I say, trying to ignore the way his lips look fuller, more kissable, in the shadowiness of the car. “Isn’t that what friends do?”
“We’re friends now?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hollis.”
He turns to me with a megawatt smile.
I roll my eyes. “Are we not friends? Did we not agree to help each other out of our current predicaments as friends? Because I’d like to think I’m taking a friend around my family tomorrow night and not some random dude who doesn’t care if I live or die.”
“Wow. Okay. You just took this to the next level.” He laughs. “Live or die? Larissa, really?”