Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Anneliese burrows her nose into my neck, breathing me in, listening, holding me. She doesn’t pry. She doesn’t ask questions. She’s simply here for me.
“Donovan told our dad that I was the one who pushed her.” My voice chokes with ancient resentment. “And of course, he believed him because everyone always believed Donovan. After that, my father refused to look me in the eye. He’d pass me in the hallways at home and look right through me. I was dead to him.”
She holds me tighter.
“My father spent the rest of his miserable life making sure I knew I meant less to him than the mud on the bottom of his work boots. And Donovan took every cheap shot he could, staking his claim as the golden child,” I say. “Leaving this town, getting the hell away from those two, was the best thing I ever did.”
She holds me. “You didn’t deserve any of that. You were just a kid. An innocent kid.”
My chest constricts, and my throat closes in, but I focus on her warmth against me and her sweet, familiar scent, and it pulls me out of it.
“I’ve never talked to anyone about this besides Lynnette and Bryce,” I say. “No one else would listen. No one else cared.”
Tilting her head back, she peers up at me through her long, dark lashes and sighs.
“You’ve been running away from your legacy all this time,” she says. “Only to be forced back into it. But you’re not them, Lachlan. You are so much more than what happened to you.”
I’m tired of talking, sick of the sound of my own voice.
All I want is to lose myself with this beautiful woman—a woman who looks at me and truly sees me, a woman who makes me forget about life for a while.
I crush her mouth with a greedy kiss, pulling her hard against me. Her pillow-soft lips separate, and she meets my tongue with hers.
“I know you said this was a bad idea,” I breathe. “But you’re wrong. Being with you is the only thing that makes sense to me. You’re all I think about every minute of every hour of every day. Every day, I watch the clock, waiting for you to get home like some pathetic puppy dog. And the second that front door opens, it’s like my day is finally beginning because you’re home. Neither one of us went into this arrangement knowing something like this could happen, but it’s happening. I want you, Anneliese. And you want me too.”
She presses her forehead against my shoulder, unnervingly quiet.
“Just promise me something,” she says when she finally looks up.
“Anything.”
“Whatever happens from here, promise I’m not going to be some story you tell to a pretty girl in a London bar.”
“Falling for my dead brother’s former fiancée isn’t exactly the kind of story you tell to impress people you’re trying to sleep with,” I say, “and even if it were, you’re not just some story, Anneliese. You’re a whole damn novel.”
Her full mouth arches at one side. “Did you just say you’re falling for me?”
“I did.”
“Plot twist,” she says.
“Nah.” I scoop her into my arms and carry her upstairs. “I saw this coming from a mile away.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
ANNELIESE
twitterpated (adj.) lovestruck
“Hey, hey!” Berlin waves from several yards ahead, stepping away from a sidewalk sale table covered in clearance shoes.
It’s the third time we’ve met up in the past week. First it was mani-pedis, then we tried that new Italian place, and now we’re shopping Arcadia Grove’s Annual Summer Sidewalk Sale. Though I’m doing more window-shopping than actual shopping. Still, it’s nice to spend time with her, aimlessly walking the city sidewalks, latte in hand, feeling like a normal twentysomething hanging out with a good friend.
“Oh, did I tell you I met Lachlan’s friend Bryce the other day?” I ask as she plucks a pair of violet suede heels from an open shoebox and slides one onto her left foot.
She glances up. “Bryce Hornsby?”
“You went to school with him, didn’t you? He would’ve been in your class? With Lachlan?”
Berlin steps her foot into the other heel, suddenly towering at least four inches above me.
“Yeah, actually . . . he and I briefly had a thing last year,” she says. “It was more of a hookup kind of thing. It was never serious. At least that was how it started. He kept pushing to take things to the next level, and I wasn’t really feeling that same way about him. In the end, he didn’t take the rejection that well. It got a little intense. I had to break it off for good.”
“Bryce?” I ask. “He seemed so chill when I met him.”
“Ha.” She steps out of the vibrant shoes and places them back in the box. “Don’t they all?”
“Did he ever do anything crazy?”
“If you mean calling my phone fifty times a day and driving by my apartment to see who I was hanging out with is crazy, then yes.”