Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 102549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 513(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 513(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
Which lasts all of thirty seconds before I hear footsteps come back inside my room. “For fuck’s sake, Mom—” My eyes fly open, and there, standing in the doorway, isn’t my parents but the best sight in the world.
Kit and Brady. They wear small smiles, way too many clothes, and hold a big bouquet of flowers.
“We … uh …” Kit starts. It’s so unlike him to not know what he’s going to say before he says it, so the hesitance unnerves me.
“We brought you these.” Brady holds out the flowers.
“Thank you.” I’ve never been given flowers before in my life. What am I supposed to do with them?
I lower my head and sniff them because that’s what I’ve seen in movies, but they smell like … flowers.
Still, I do the obligatory “Mmm” noise and then place them on the bed next to my cast.
“There’s a card, silly,” Brady says, snapping off the note on top.
“After the video you sent me last night, nothing on a piece of paper could live up to that. Sorry.”
Brady leans in. “Just read it.”
My gaze flicks to Kit, who’s biting his bottom lip.
“Or don’t,” Kit says. “Up to you. It’s all good. You know what, on second thought, here, I’ll read it to you.” Kit rounds the bed and tries to take the note off me, but I don’t let him.
“Well, now I have to read it.”
“Don’t mind Kit,” Brady says. “He’s trying to chicken out.”
“Chicken out of what?”
“Open it and find out.” Brady points toward the note.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this to a man with a brain bleed,” Kit says.
“My brain bleed is gone, according to my latest scan, thank you very much. And I’m not showing any signs of TBI, so go me!” Traumatic brain injury would be an ending to my career, and I’m not out of the woods yet, but so far, so good.
Kit is so stiff beside me, and not in the good way. He looks like he’s stopped breathing altogether.
It only makes me want to read the card more. And when I open it, I realize how wrong I was about the video.
The obscenely sexy video they sent me last night was good. But this? One teeny, tiny little question beats it hands down.
Will you be our boyfriend?
I stare at it, blinking a few times to make sure I’m reading it right and it’s not some painkiller-induced fantasy.
There are a million things running through my head, from it would be impossible to hell yes and everything in between.
But the number one question I have is “Our boyfriend?” I ask. Because that’s the thing I want the most.
If I took all the logistics out and was only left with Kit and Brady, I would do everything in my power to keep what we have. To keep it going long-term but on a lot more permanent basis.
On either side of me, they both take one of my hands.
“Our boyfriend,” Brady says. “Kit and I talked last night, and it’s what we both want.”
“But we totally get it if it’s too much,” Kit cuts in. “There’s no pressure or anything. We can forget we even asked and keep things casual. Yeah, you’re right, we should do that.”
“See,” Brady says. “He’s chickening out and trying to back down. Though, he has a point about there being no pressure.”
“It’s not the pressure of making a decision. I only have one question.” That’s a lie. I have a billion, but this is the only one that matters. “How do you propose we make it work when we live scattered all over the country?”
When they stare at each other, I realize they don’t have a solution for that yet.
“We have the rest of the summer to work it out,” Kit says. “If you even want to.”
Now Brady’s biting his lip too, and I kind of want to slap both of them.
“Of course I fucking want it.”
Brady’s face breaks out into a huge smile, and he points at Kit. “I told you he’d feel the same way about you as you do about him.”
“How he feels about me?” My best friend—or ex-best friend since he moved East—has storm clouds rolling in his gray eyes, and they’re directed at Brady.
Kit pulls over the visitor’s chair and sits, enclosing my hand in his two massive paws. They’re hands that have been on me before. All over me. But there’s something different in the way he holds me now.
“I need to be honest with you.”
I’m scared of what he’s going to say.
“I took the job at the Pentagon because …” He looks at Brady and then down at our hands. “Because … I needed to get away from my feelings. It was hurting too much living with you.”
“Ouch.” I try to slip my hand out, but he doesn’t let me.
“Not because of the boundaries like I previously told you, but because I’m in love with you. I have been for so long, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted you in every way possible, but because of the navy, I couldn’t ask you. We couldn’t … All we could have was our occasional moment we’d reduce to a fun fling with others there.”