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)
But whew, boy. Though I might not like hanging out with them, I was considered theirs, and hell hath no fury like two girls that were protective of me.
There’d been one time that a little boy at school had cornered me and had asked me to be his date to the middle school dance. I’d wanted nothing more than to get away and had been trying to accomplish that when Janie and Kayla had found me there, scared to death.
They’d lost their shit on the poor kid, and he’d never looked at me twice again.
Another tool dropped, making me smile.
Today was a really good day, and I felt calmer and happier than I’d felt in a really long time.
And I wanted to be near him some more…
Throwing the covers off of me, I walked to my closet and contemplated slipping something different on, but in the end, I decided to go with my tall neoprene boots and keep the pajamas on that I was wearing.
He’d probably think that I was silly, but I wanted him to know the real me.
The things that made me happy.
In order to do that, to show him the real me, I decided to let him see exactly what I was.
A dork.
Walking to the front door, I disarmed the panel and reached for my raincoat.
It’d been raining constantly since we’d gotten to his place a little earlier in the evening.
By the sound of the rain outside, I had a feeling that he was convinced that I wouldn’t hear anything through the beat of the constant downpour.
But he underestimated me and my hearing.
Not that I cared that he was out there—at least not anymore.
I’d felt terrible for telling him to stop working on his truck awhile back, and now, after spending the day with him, I knew that he was a good guy.
He honestly didn’t know that he had been keeping me awake when he was working, and I highly doubted that he’d ever do it again if he knew that I was sleeping or about to go to sleep.
After zipping the coat up, I shuffled carefully across my driveway, and into the woods that separated my property from his.
Once I’d breached the trees that lined the back of his shop, I poked my head around the corner and stared.
He was in much the same position as he was the first time I’d seen him in there.
Bent with both hands resting on the edges of the fenders—this time the vehicle was a Chevy Impala—his head bowed. He was studying the contents of the engine, staring at it like it would talk to him in some way.
He was wearing dirty blue jeans, a black t-shirt that fit him like a glove, and his work boots.
The same hat sat atop his head, but this time it was slightly askew, likely due to him bumping it on the hood that was raised and resting precariously close to his forehead.
I stepped farther into the shop and cleared my throat.
He looked up, blinked, and then grinned.
“You look like a murderer.”
I looked down at the long black raincoat. It was one of my father’s old ones, and it hung on me like a massive black trash bag would have.
The fluorescent stripes were faded, but the jacket still did what it was intended to do—repel water.
“I only have one rain jacket,” I murmured. “Do you mind if I keep you company for a little bit?”
He shook his head. “By all means. I was trying not to get worked up over a phone call I just had with my daughter. Working on my project car seemed better than tossing chairs into walls.”
I blinked. “What happened?”
He groaned and brought his dirty hands up to his face, seconds away from rubbing his eyes in frustration.
He caught himself before he could smear the grease all over his face.
I stepped forward, unbuttoning the coat as I did.
Once I had it all the way undone, I shrugged it off and laid it over a jack handle that was sticking up in the corner of the room.
When I turned back around, he was staring at me.
“You’re wearing a unicorn onesie,” he murmured, his mouth kicking up at the corners. “Why do I find that cute?”
I shrugged.
He chuckled, then sighed as if he’d remembered what he’d been about to tell me when I’d distracted him.
“My daughter hadn’t called me in a week, and so I called her myself when I got home earlier.” He turned to lean against the Impala, his arms crossing tightly over his chest, and his feet stretched slightly out in front of him and crossed at the ankle. “She sounded like she was sick. When I asked her if she was okay, she broke down and told me that everyone there was mean to her, and she was having trouble integrating. That she wanted to come home, but the only reason she was still there and not here was because her mom would give her shit about quitting.”