Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
“Saw the kids throwing flowers in to him, but I haven’t gotten to that yet,” Velle said. “Everything alright with you?” he asked.
“Don’t need to shrink my head,” Eddie said, waving him off. “Just had some… life stuff.”
Velle and I shared another look, but we were both too glad to have him back to press the issue and piss him off.
“Well, glad to have you back. And not just because I missed the food,” Velle said as he grabbed a soda out of the fridge. “I’ll get it,” he said when the doorbell chimed. “Probably Dixon asking for some body oil or something.”
But when I glanced out, I noticed a beater parked in the driveway—compact, blue, dinged up all over, the hood bent slightly inward like something heavy had dropped down on it.
“Hey, can I help you?” Velle asked, but his body and the door were blocking whoever he was talking to from view.
“Hey, sorry to bother you. I’m just… looking for someone. I was hoping I maybe finally found the right place.”
It was a woman’s voice—all soft and sweet with a hint of huskiness. Something tugged at the edge of my memory, but it was gone before I could grab hold of it.
“Sure. We got people here. Who are you looking for?”
As he asked, I saw something move inside the backseat of the car. No. Not something. Someone. Someone small. Tossing something up in the air. A stuffed animal, maybe?
“Well, here’s the thing,” the woman said, and there was that tug again. Almost like familiarity. Like I’d heard that voice before. “I don’t think I even know his real name.”
“Okay. What name do you have?”
“York.”
York.
Everything snapped into painfully sharp focus.
Because I did know that voice.
But I remembered it even more husky, tight, and breathy with desire, lips near my ear, her soft body under mine, everything tightening as she came, as she cried my name.
Velle, as if sensing my presence just a few feet behind him, stepped back, taking the door with him.
Then there she was.
Tall, lean, wearing baggy jeans and a loose, tucked-in, well-worn T-shirt for Yosemite National Park. Her long hair was half up, wavy, and tousled in a way that was less designed that way and more from pure forgetfulness to run a brush through it.
It’d been a few years, but, damn, that face was as pretty as ever—rounded features, plush lips, the lightest smattering of freckles over her cheekbones and nose, and dark, almost black, eyes.
“Runa,” I said.
I glanced from her to the backseat of the car.
Where a little girl was hugging a stuffed animal to her chest.
Not just any stuffed animal.
Oh, no.
One from a small-town fair in some backwoods place in New York State.
Where I’d stepped up beside a pretty woman at a shooting game and put down my quarters.
I won.
Gave the pretty woman the stuffed capybara.
Then went to her hotel room with her.
And left before the sun came up in the morning.
“Fuck.”
CHAPTER TWO
Runa
So.
Even with perfect use, condoms are only effective ninety-eight percent of the time. So two in every one hundred people still get knocked up after a night of fun.
Guess which side of the statistic I fell on.
I probably should have known I was at my peak fertility. I’d been so out of my mind with a need for release that I would have climbed a stump if it looked remotely man-shaped.
Then there I was. At a fair. Trying to distract myself by testing my very rusty shooting skills.
And there he was.
Tall. Broad. Bearded. Hot.
One cute capybara, one trip to my hotel room, and one defective condom later, and I was half the country away, trekking a trail in Wyoming, when I started throwing up first thing in the morning. Then when I tried to eat. When I even thought about food.
Pair that with a suspiciously missing period, and I bought myself a test, got my confirmation, and felt my whole life shift off its axis.
There were options, of course. But the thing was, I was careful. I didn’t indulge in casual sex often, and when I did, I was strict about protection. I wouldn’t even change into certain positions because I knew there were some shitty guys out there who practiced ‘stealthing’ and removed the condom mid-act without you knowing. I even made sure I watched to be certain they’d put the damn thing on right. Then I lived with a false sort of safety because I assumed the things were practically bulletproof.
So if I was that careful about it and still wound up pregnant, I figured that was some sort of sign from the universe. That maybe it was time to stop dicking around, find some job I didn’t loathe with every fiber of my being, get a decent place to rest my head, and raise my baby.
I did look for York right after I found out. I went all the way back to that sleepy town in New York, haunted every dive bar, pub, restaurant, coffee shop, gym, and strip club I could find.