Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 64880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
“Well, I’m listening now.” He hugged her closer, sending a thrill of awareness racing across her skin. “Can I take you out tonight? We have training early tomorrow, so I can’t stay out too late, but we could get dinner and talk, or…whatever.”
Tulsi sighed dreamily. “I would love to get dinner and talk. And definitely whatever. I want lots and lots of whatever. As much of it as I can get.”
Pike shook his head, that wonder-filled glow still lighting his face. “I really am an idiot.”
“Yes.” She laughed. “But I still like you.”
“I like you, too,” he said. “I more than like you. I just thought…”
“What?” she asked, heart still floating even when he set her back on her feet.
“I thought there was something wrong with me, thinking about you the way I did,” he confessed, his gaze shifting to the ground. “You’re Mia’s friend, and I’ve known you since you were this tiny little thing. I felt like I should be protecting you, not noticing how good you looked in your swimsuit.”
“God, Pike,” she said, her head spinning. “You don’t know how much I wanted you to notice me. Seriously, I’ve been crushing on you since I was practically a fetus.”
“That’s a long time.”
“You’re telling me,” she said, loving the way his eyes sparkled when he laughed.
“I wish I’d gotten the hint sooner,” he said, smile fading. “I’ve wasted so much time, fighting the way I feel, when I could have been kissing you, instead.”
“It’s okay.” Tulsi fought the urge to weep with relief, not wanting to ruin this perfect moment with a runny nose and red eyes. “We’ll just have to kiss more often to make up for it.”
He nodded as he drew her into his arms. “As often as you’ll let me.”
He leaned down, sealing the promise—and Tulsi’s fate—with a kiss.
While Tulsi was busy kissing him back, her heart was busy falling into Pike’s hands, where it vowed to stay until the day it stopped beating. Her most impossible dream had become a reality, proving there was no wish too big or outrageous to come true. It was like discovering the unicorns she’d loved as a kid were real. Realizing Pike Sherman cared about her as more than a friend was that miraculous, that magical, and from that moment on, she was helpless to do anything but fall deeply and profoundly in love with him.
They spent the entire week together, grabbing lunch at the drive-through down the street, taking picnics out to the nearby lake for dinner, and spending hours lying on the quilt they’d spread on the hay in her aunt’s back pasture, talking, laughing, and kissing until their lips were numb. By Friday night, Tulsi was ready for more than kisses, but Pike insisted they wait. He didn’t want Tulsi to have any regrets about going too far, too fast. He wanted their first time together—her first time with anyone—to be perfect.
They parted on Sunday afternoon with promises to see each other as much as they could before Pike joined the minor league season already in progress when he graduated in June. Tulsi cried all the way back to Lonesome Point, not knowing how she was going to make it through the three weeks until his next planned visit. Now that she knew what it was like to be with Pike, living without him felt like trying to live without oxygen.
She was still in a state of deep despair when Pike surprised her the next weekend. She walked into the barn Friday afternoon after school to find him waiting with a fistful of flowers, and a plan for them to be alone. Tulsi told her parents she was going camping with friends and she and Pike took sleeping bags, the camp stove, supplies, and a bottle of sweet white wine out to the old cabin at the edge of the Hearst family’s sprawling ranch. They cooked spaghetti with meatballs, drank wine while watching the stars come out, and made love for the first time in front of the campfire with orange and yellow flames dancing across their bare skin.
Tulsi had never seen anything as beautiful as Pike without his clothes on or felt anything as earth-shattering as the way he made her feel. He touched her in all the places she’d been dying for him to touch her, kissed her until there was no place his lips hadn’t explored, and when he knelt between her legs and pushed inside her with aching slowness, the emotion in his eyes was enough to banish the brief flash of pain.
“I love you,” she whispered as he held still inside her, knowing she would never feel this close to another person in her whole life.
“I love you, too,” Pike said, his hands skimming gently up and down her ribs. “Is this okay?”