Total pages in book: 212
Estimated words: 207966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1040(@200wpm)___ 832(@250wpm)___ 693(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 207966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1040(@200wpm)___ 832(@250wpm)___ 693(@300wpm)
“Let’s save that for now. So much heavy stuff tonight. And now my eyes’re gettin’ heavy too.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Can you say it again?”
“Say what?”
“That you love me. I promise I’ll stop hurting myself. I love you. And I love myself, too. I’m gonna make sure I start treating myself better.”
“I love you, GGJ. And one day, if this goes well and you give me the rest of you, maybe I’ll make you GGG.”
She pressed her lips to mine. Then, her head was on my chest. My arms wound tight around her. The lights were on. And we fell asleep like that.
21
I reached for the table beside me, about to fetch a condom from the drawer when Gigi caught my wrist, halting me.
My eyes hit hers.
She shook her head. “Maybe you don’t need that.”
I told her over a month back when she was still staying at her aunt’s, that I got a test, and I was clean. After last night, I guess she was ready for this.
“Maybe?” I checked.
It was the morning after the drunken heart-to-heart talk. We’d gone down for a club breakfast and were both pretty hungover, so cut out early and came back up afterwards to take a nap. And now a couple hours later, she’d woken with my eyes on her for a change. She smiled shyly and then I pulled her on top of me.
“If you…” she swallowed hard, “If you promise I don’t have to worry about this, I’ll believe you.”
“I told you I got a test,” I reminded her softly.
She nodded. “Yeah. But that was like… over a month ago, so…”
I hard-blinked as the meaning scored like nails down a chalkboard. “Excuse me?” I reared back.
She startled and looked confused.
“You think I fucked someone else since then?” I demanded.
Her expression shifted to panic. “No. No, no. I… I didn’t say that.”
“I told you I took a test and now you’re asking me if you can trust me to fuck you ungloved?”
“We’ve never talked about… monogamy. I know it often goes without saying that bikers – I mean … God, I’m fucking this up again aren’t I? Me and my foot-in-mouth-itis.” She put her fingertips on her temples.
“Told you Dina was the last one I fucked before you,” I said. “So to me, we already had this conversation.”
Her eyes searched my face.
“Am I wrong?” I asked.
“You didn’t say when that was, so I …”
She stopped mid-sentence because I rolled her to her back to get her the fuck off me. I stormed out.
I took a leak, washed up, and when I was back in the room, she was in a bathrobe on the end of the bed, chewing on her thumb.
I threw the towel and my shorts on the floor and reached into the drawer for a pair of boxers.
“I’m sorry, Jesse,” she said hoarsely. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How else could you mean it?” I fired back. “That conversation last night mean nothin’ to you?”
“That conversation last night meant everything to me. Everything.” She put her hand on her chest for emphasis. “I mean… I meant it as me letting you in, like you want. Like I want. I just… didn’t think before I spoke. And a lot of bikers don’t believe in monogamy, and it was a poor choice of words.”
“Dig that hole much deeper, Gianna, you might not be able to find your way out.”
“Ouch, Jesse.”
“Yeah, ouch. That’s how you just made me fuckin’ feel.”
“I didn’t just want to assume you’d go without sex that whole time I was at Aunt Francie’s. There are women around all the time and… look at you. They’d be offering. I know what happened last night and it meant everything, but I didn’t know if before that, if while I was gone…”
I growled at her.
She put her head in her hands.
“Yup. Had offers while you were gone, G. Turned ‘em down because I’m in a fuckin’ relationship.” I pulled on a pair of jeans. “Because like I said, I’m yours and you’re mine. You fuck anyone while you were in the falls, and I was up here?”
“Of course not.”
“But yet you think I did?” I yanked a drawer open to hunt for a pair of socks. The drawer that used to be my sock drawer was now her sock and underwear drawer. I gestured. “See that? That’s your shit in my drawer. This is you in my bed. In my sheets. You think that meant nothin’ to me, think you were outta sight so outta mind?” I pulled open another drawer to find my socks.
“I was tryin’ to show I trust you. But like I said, I was burnt, and we’ve never had the conversation and I picked a poor way to make the offer.”
“I give you reasons to think I’d burn you?”
She shook her head.