Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 122514 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122514 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
So even to this day, a filled and active gym of basketball players made a part of me purr like a kitten.
I’d missed this, and I’d forgotten how much I missed this. Seems as if coming back to camp hadn’t been the only part of my history I was revisiting, and I was okay with that too. I dropped the ball I’d been bouncing idly and whipped my head around.
Reese stood at the counter, sweat wetting his hair, his face, and his shirt. He held a basketball on his hip.
“What?”
My brain turned off. Reese Forster looked as if he’d stepped out of the shower. He didn’t smell like it, but he looked like it.
My groin was inflamed. The Fourth of July decided to visit, and I groaned, biting my lip. So embarrassing.
“What’d you say?” I asked again, my voice a little raspy.
He nodded toward the screen door. “You and that guy from the other day. You’re good friends.”
It took a second, but Grant. It clicked then. The Tub Day.
And nope.
I was not going to let my weird brain go nuts with thoughts here. He was asking because he was curious. That’s all. For no reason other than curiosity.
Right.
A monotone voice sounded through my brain: Calm the fuck down.
I swallowed, and just like that, I was calmer.
My normal response was to go into hyperdrive, but enough was enough. I needed to be a normal person. Reese (I wasn’t using his last name any more) had asked a general question, because he was generally interested, and I could respond—like a generally normal person.
You’d think I’d be better after getting hazed. I wasn’t. I was worse, in some ways.
I tucked some hair behind my ear. “I used to work here a long time ago, and he and I—”
Reese bounced the ball between his legs, once, catching it right away. “There was a thing?”
I was totally cool here.
“Yeah.” I winced at myself. “I mean, no. We were best friends. That’s it.”
He dropped the ball again, starting to bounce it in front of him. “So there wasn’t a thing?”
“Friends.”
“So who did you have a thing with?” He was still bouncing, his head cocked to the side.
“What?” Why is he asking about this?
“Come on.” He looked me up and down. “You’re hot. You’re trying to tell me you’re single?”
I couldn’t say I wasn’t.
He kept on, “And you’re working here as what? A gym court attendant?”
“Um.” Shit. He wanted the deets on why this train wreck was still working at a camp.
All the Damian trauma, Grandpa Newt, and getting fired exploded in my chest in one big ball.
I let out a sigh.
“That’s...stupidly tragic.” What else could I say?
He caught the ball and stopped, staring hard at me. “Stupidly tragic?”
I clipped my head in a nod. “Would you like more water? I can get that for you.”
Pretending like he’d asked for more water, I started walking away. I called over my shoulder, “I’ll get you more water.”
He stared at me the whole way as I went back out the door. I couldn’t see him, but I felt him. And then I remembered: we had just filled the table with water an hour ago.
• • •
Reese kept his distance from me the rest of the day. I worked like a normal employee, with only minimal fangirling still going on inside of me, but not as much. The whole ‘stupidly tragic’ thing put a damper on my inner fangirl.
But he watched me, and I couldn’t ignore the flutter going on in my stomach. And those weren’t there because of my fanatical fan-ways. They were there and growing because of a different reason, one that was more like me woman and he man, that sort of way.
And that was bad.
I could do nuts. Crazy was a nice firm wall that I kept around myself, shielding people from getting too close, or from me connecting as a real human being kinda way. It was a good firm wall locked around me, and the more he was watching me, the more that wall was getting dents in it, and that was the bad part.
Really bad. Like seriously, I’m stupid—sign me up for another stint of therapy kind of bad.
I did not need to deal with anyone on a real basis. Lucas was the most I’d tried in a year, and we all know how that ended.
Reese Forster made Grandpa Newt not even a blip.
But, I was walking from the main lounge, after dinner when he fell in step beside me, and for some reason no one clued Reese Forster in on how bad of an idea he was to my senses.
“I didn’t mean to freak you out earlier,” he said.
I almost faltered in my stride, but caught myself and kept going. I needed to deal with this problem before I was put in a mental clinic.