Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
I snickered. “You have a couch…”
“A couch that has a thousand and one lumps in it,” he gave me a piercing look. “I know from first-hand experience that it sucks. Let me just say that over the eight hundred million times Beatrice forced me to sleep on it, I’ve come to realize it’s not fit for a goddamn child—let alone a grown adult.”
“Then why do you have it?” I countered.
He shrugged. “Sentimental value. It was there for me through the years when she was not…and Beatrice got all the fuckin’ good shit in the divorce.”
I snickered. “She really shafted you, didn’t she?”
He nodded. “She did. You have no idea how much.”
I walked into my room and came back out a few minutes later with a few of my essentials, trying not to let the relief I felt that I wasn’t staying by myself tonight show. I’d get actual clothing tomorrow.
I, apparently, had failed.
“What?” I questioned.
“You don’t have to look so eager to leave. You know, you could’ve told your father that you wanted to go with him.”
I shot him a wary look.
“What, you thought your little act was fooling everyone?”
I nodded. I had.
Earlier, I’d thought I’d been doing a bang-up job of appearing as if I was keeping it all together.
And, obviously, I’d done at least a decent job of it, otherwise my dad wouldn’t have left.
Granted, he said he’d be back tomorrow to fix up a few of ‘holes’ he discovered in my security system.
Not that I was complaining about that.
I couldn’t explain why I needed them to leave.
I just did.
But I wasn’t ready to be completely alone…just mostly.
“I’m sorry for not talking to you over the last couple days,” I blurted suddenly. “I was just so…”
“Hurt,” he finished for me.
I nodded.
“I wasn’t sure that Janie would let you off the hook if I came myself. She doesn’t see me as a good fit for you,” he admitted.
“What do you mean?” I asked, curious now.
I would not admit to him that he was more my style than anyone I’d ever met—and he definitely didn’t need to know that my feelings had extended past friendship and were now solidly into infatuation.
I was more than capable of hiding those feelings from him.
“I’m old, woman,” he answered. “I’ve got a kid that’s closer to you in age than I am, and honestly? Sometimes when I’m around her, I think that she can see right through me. Can see what I don’t have to give.”
It broke my heart that he saw himself that way.
“Coke,” I said softly. “Janie’s no one to judge who a person dates. She’s dating someone just as older than you are.”
“So, tell me why you acted okay when you weren’t,” he ordered, changing the subject.
I sighed, letting him.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I was a difficult child and I hated being that way for them…it’s just easier for them to think that I’m normal—for me to put on that happy face—rather than letting them know that I still struggle sometimes.”
“You think that your dad would care that you were scared?” he asked.
I shrugged. “No. But then he’d feel obligated to stay here and take care of me. And…I don’t want him to feel like he has to do that anymore. He did enough of that when I was younger. I’m telling you… I wasn’t an easy kid to raise.”
“Cora…”
“Take me to your house,” I ordered. “Oh! My eggs...”
I turned to go back, but he caught me around the waist with one of his long, muscular arms, curling me into his body tight.
“We’ll leave them here. I’ll come check on them tomorrow morning…okay?”
I agreed reluctantly. “I only have two more weeks left.”
He grunted. “Just wait until the last week. You’ll be checking the incubator once a day to make sure there aren’t any new cracks.”
I clapped my hands in excitement. “I can’t freakin’ wait!”
Chapter 14
Shout out to everyone who’s seen me get totally psycho and stuck around anyway.
-Cora’s Facebook status update
Cora
I heard him getting out of bed, and I cracked my eyes open to see if he was getting up for real this time or just making another round of the house like he’d done the other four times he got up that night while he thought I was sleeping—which I was.
Kind of.
But the brightness on his phone each time he picked it up to send out a text had me waking despite my desire to sleep.
After he got whatever text he was waiting for, he’d put it back down and do a round of the house, checking various locks and windows, as well as peeking through the curtains in his room.
His bed was really, really loud. Each time he got up, the headboard creaked, and the springs in the mattress squeaked.
He didn’t get up for real this time, either.
Instead, he went to the bathroom, peed with the door wide-ass open, and then washed his hands.