Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 84446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
“I stayed because I…” she trailed off, catching herself. I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to be even more vulnerable with me.
“Wish you’d told me,” I said, my fingers moving from her scalp, down her jaw.
The barely-there touch had her face moving out from the pillow, wanting more.
I was good at that, at least.
My fingers moved over her jaw, across her lips, down her nose.
It wasn’t until I stopped touching her that her eyes fluttered open.
“Fuck, mouse,” I said, wincing at the evidence of all that crying Nico had told me about. “I don’t deserve tears like that,” I said, running a finger over her swollen eyelid, then down her splotchy cheek. “Never wanted you to cry over me.”
“I’ve cried over you a lot,” she admitted, her lower lip trembling like she might just do so again.
“I didn’t know,” I told her.
“You were never there to,” she shot back.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “There’s a lot going on with work right now. But that’s not an excuse not to come home to you and give you what you need. I just… I had no fucking idea what you needed. Figured I had… two things to offer you.”
“Two things?” she asked.
“Money,” I admitted, shrugging that off. “And making you come for me.”
“Stop,” she said, blinking suddenly glistening eyes.
“Stop what?” I asked, heartbeat tripping faster, not sure what I’d done wrong already.
“Stop trying to use sex to fix our problems.”
“I didn’t think that was what I was doing. It’s just… it’s something we have. That we both enjoy. Or am I wrong about that?” I asked. “Do you not like when I’m inside of you? When I have my face between your thighs? When you have my cock in your mouth?”
Her eyes blazed for a second, but she managed to bank it back down.
“It’s not enough.”
“No,” I agreed. “No, it’s not. I should have been taking you out. Should have been coming home to have dinner with you. Taking you to that bookstore or coffee place you seem to like so much. There’s a lot of shit I should have been doing. But I can’t go back and change how I acted. All I can do is try to get you to believe that I will do better moving forward.”
She said nothing to that, and I couldn’t blame her for not trusting me. What the fuck had I done to warrant that at this point?
“I never meant to hurt you,” I told her, meaning it down to my fucking marrow.
“I want to believe you,” she said, voice small.
“But?” I prompted, getting nothing but silence in response. “Mouse, if we want to fix this, we gotta be able to talk about shit. Least, that’s what I think I heard on a therapy commercial or some shit,” I added, getting a little smile out of her. “How about this,” I started, changing course. “You tell me what you want from me moving forward. I’ll rearrange shit to make it happen. Anything,” I added when she didn’t immediately start listing shit.
Her gaze lowered, but she took a deep breath. “I want you home for dinner sometimes.”
“Done.”
To that, she made a snorting sound.
“What?”
“If it’s that easy, why haven’t you been before?”
“Because I’m a selfish fuck, I guess,” I admitted. “I’m used to my life how it is. Long work days. Having my crew over to hang out. That’s been my life for years. And I had my head too far up my own ass to see that maybe it should be different with you around.”
“I wanted to have them over,” she said, making my brows draw down.
“Who over?”
“Your family,” she said, looking up at me, pain still piercing her pretty blue eyes. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to have them over for Thanksgiving. I was going to decorate. And cook.”
That’s what she’d been so excited to ask me?
Fuck, I felt like even more of a dick now.
“I’d like it if you did,” I said. “A lot of us… we don’t have families of our own. Don’t think Cinna, Dav, Rico, and a few other of my guys and I have had Thanksgiving dinner in years. If ever.”
“Ever?” she asked, lower lip poking out at the thought.
“My family… hasn’t been like yours, mouse.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said. And it was hanging there in the air between us. Because you didn’t tell me.
“Realize now I got a lot of shit I should have been explaining all along. Got no excuse other than being a fucking idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot.”
“Lost someone like you, Lore. Pretty sure that’s the fucking textbook definition of an idiot.”
When she didn’t immediately say that I hadn’t lost her, I felt a desperate twist in my gut.
“What else do you want from me? Dinners, I’ll do that. What else?”