Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 33658 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33658 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
And kiss him. I’d really like to know what it’s like to kiss him.
“Per my grandmother,” he adds, “bringing a woman under duress a chocolate bar is the wisest move ever. She swears it’s a better survival technique than anything they learn in basic training.”
I already know from our brief chats that he lives with his grandmother and uses his contract work to take care of her, which is incredibly sweet. As is the fact that I can tell he both loves and respects her. His father was military at some point as well, but he shuts down if I try to talk about him. Of course, we’ve only had casual chats in a “quiet” environment, too. I smile and reach for the candy bar. “Thank you, Jensen. And your grandmother sounds like a smart lady.”
He slides the worksheet Allen had abandoned in front of him and starts working an algebra problem with such ease that, at first, I think he’s just doodling. “Feisty old wench, but yes, a smart one, too. She makes a hell of a chocolate chip cookie, too. She bribes me with them. Do you bake?”
“Not even a little. My mother does. She’d try to claim cookie fame over your grandmother.”
“We should get her and my grandmother together and have a bake-off. We win no matter who loses.”
I laugh and the librarian shhs me.
“I should go,” Jensen says. “I have to pick up some meds for my grandmother.”
“Okay,” I say, not even trying to hide my disappointment. I don’t want him to go.
He doesn’t go. He sits there, staring at me, the air thick with something—I don’t know what—but it sets my stomach aflutter.
“You want to catch a movie or something Friday night?”
My lips curve with the invitation, and the flutters in my belly transform into a dance. “Yes. I’d like to go to a movie.”
“With me, right?”
I barely bite back another laugh, sure to earn me a reprimand. “Yes. With you.”
“Tomorrow night at seven, right here?”
“Perfect,” I say, and we share a smile, the attraction between us sparking for sure.
“See you soon,” he says, and then he’s gone, and I’m sighing with just how over the top into him I am.
I reach for the worksheet he’d doodled on to prepare for my next student, and it’s not doodling at all. He’s worked every problem, and I’m smiling all over again. He’s gotten all the questions right.
Good-looking and smart. I might just fall in love.
Jensen
With a smile on my lips, I whip my battered, black Ford F-150 into the driveway of the equally battered trailer I call home and kill the engine. Easing back into my seat, I arch my back and dig the wad of cash in my pocket out for review. Ten thousand dollars and a date with Layla tomorrow night. I call this one hell of a good day.
I’m going to kiss her and see what honey and sunshine taste like. Fuck yes, I am. And fuck yes, life is good.
“Yeehaw,” I whisper, strumming the cash with my fingers. How many nineteen-year-olds make this kind of dough? I’m liking the heck out of my new job. Hack. Get cash. I snort. “And they say that government databases can’t be hacked. This low-life trailer trash proved them wrong.” That’s what the kids at school call me after my grandmother got herself arrested for public intoxication. Trailer trash. Misfit. “Screw you,” I mumble to the voices I’m making a part of my past. “Screw you all.”
Once I count the money, down to the ten thousandth dollar, I hold out two hundred for my date with Layla and stuff the rest back in my pocket. I scoop up the bundle of flowers on the seat. I was going to hold out the Snickers bar for me to eat before bed, but decide better, snatching it up to hand off with the bouquet.
Candy had worked in my favor with Layla, after all. And I’ll need all the sweetness I can muster to convince Grandmom to head to that fancy alcohol-rehab center I’ve arranged for her to enter up in Temple. It’s close—only twenty miles away—which I hope feels less intimidating to her. She’ll curse me and probably hit me, I expect, steeling myself for what is to come. She’s got a hell of a right hook, but contact doesn’t hurt anymore. Hasn’t for years.
Besides, I know she can’t control herself. I’ve read enough about alcoholism to know it’s an illness, and she needs my love and help to recover. The woman has raised me and considering I’m probably the reason she drinks, I owe her.
I mean, I’m the trigger, because I’m the reason my mother is gone. It sucks, and before I go down that rabbit hole, I need out of this truck.
I open the door and exit the vehicle, slamming the door behind me and whistling my way down the path to the front door. The whistle fades the instant I enter the trailer. Grandmom sits on the couch, wrapped in the same crinkly blue dress that she’d gone to bed wearing, a big bottle of vodka in her hand. Two men dressed in suits sit on either side of her.