Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
I watched his gaze follow it down my jaw, his mouth going dang near flat. “You smell like cinnamon right now,” he stated bluntly.
“I do?” I asked, sniffling. I hadn’t cried a whole lot in front of people, but no one who had witnessed it had ever commented on the way it smelled. They would have said something… wouldn’t they?
He made a positive sound in his throat.
“I’m sorry.”
There was more shifting, another pause, then, “What are you sorry for?”
“The smell.” I could feel his gaze on my skin.
“You’re apologizing for smelling like cinnamon?” he asked slowly.
I used my knuckle to dab at the corner of my eyes some more. “The way you said it…” I tried to hold in the couple more tears threatening my eyeballs, but it didn’t work. “You made it sound like you don’t like it. It’s just been a lot of change in a short amount of time, and it hit me all of a sudden, Fluff.”
There went my voice again.
I could not lose it. I needed to drive, I reminded myself. What was I getting upset about? Missing my friends was one thing. But he didn’t like the way I smelled? Since when was that new? I dried the parts of my face I could reach with my shoulder, then took a deep breath. “It’s fine. I’m just emotional because I’m upset since seeing them from now on will be more complicated, and I’m worried it’ll be a while, but we’ll figure it out. We always do. I’ll stop crying in a minute, I swear.”
He didn’t say a word, and when a minute passed and I still hadn’t stopped, his sigh filled the cabin.
Stop it, Nina.
It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be worried about being on your own surrounded by strangers. It’s okay to lose one more thing from a life you loved.
Maybe that’s what I was really the most worked up about. Losing that one more thing so freaking soon. For all my big talk, accepting change wasn’t one of my strengths in life. Maybe it was some trauma response from the time that Matti’s presence had disappeared from my life without a warning, or maybe I just loved my friends, and everything going on right now was a lot to handle in general. It could be both.
I wiped at my face some more, that time not even trying to be dainty about it. I used my whole palm. Then I wiped it on my pants and did it again, trying so dang hard not to make some real unladylike sound. Get it together.
“Henri?” I asked in a wobbly voice after a second.
His “hmm?” came out like more of a grumble.
I moved my hand enough so I could peer at him through my fingers. “Sorry for biting you.”
“You….”
I didn’t think he believed me from the way he was frowning and glaring. And I must have been too focused on it—his dark pink lips—that I didn’t see his fingers coming for me until his palm cupped the back of my neck.
Before my body could do anything other than process the fact that this man was being affectionate with me—nice to me—his voice came out all rumpled velvet as he murmured, “They’ll be back soon.”
They had both reassured me of the same thing, but coming out of Henri’s mouth, it was soothing for some reason.
He kept going. “Matti said they were going to try for next month for a weekend.”
Matti. That pain in my butt. What he’d mouthed to me was burned into my retinas. Get Henri to marry me?
What was he thinking dropping that on me and then walking away? We needed an hour-long discussion, minimum, to go over something like that. Some conversations couldn’t be had over text, and now I was going to have to wait who knew how long to get him to explain why he would’ve brought that up. Why that would even enter his brain. Sure I’d considered it. Briefly.
But from Matti himself?
Unless….
My friend was a lot of things, but he was a realist. He was one of the most impulsive people I’d ever met, but at the same time, logic was known to steer his thoughts and actions when it mattered.
Hmm.
There had to be a reason he would throw his cousin into the ring.
What did he know that I didn’t? I wiped at my face when a couple more tears beaded along my eyelashes. I hiccupped just as a very low growl and the flexing of fingers at the back of my neck had me flicking my eyes toward the man who was trying to make me feel better. His eyebrows were knitted together, lips pressed tight.
Or maybe Matti had lost his mind suggesting Henri tie his life to mine when he could barely sit beside me.
“I’m sorry!” I reached for the door. “I can’t help it. Let me roll down the window.”