Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 56970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
On the Friday afternoon, Morse and I meet at the tea rooms. On the Friday evening, I’m trudging over the dunes to the bach, alone.
Damon eyes me from the couch where he’s slung himself, squeezing the trigger of his lifeguard megaphone to the tune of something on his headphones. I’m wondering if calling his fish Fidget has anything to do with his own habits. He’s all go, Damon is. Even when he’s reading, he’s rhythmically drumming his finger over the paper edges.
I strip, slip into a pair of cosy pyjamas, and slump into my sewing seat across from him.
Damon pulls his headphones to his neck. “How did your date go?”
“Not the way I hoped.”
“What happened?”
“I panicked.”
“Like the last time?”
I drop my head onto the smooth surface of my sewing machine. “All I could think was ‘as big as a horse, as big as a horse’ and when he sat down the first thing out of my mouth was whether he liked big dicks.”
Damon roars with laughter; it briefly echoes through the megaphone.
“And then he asked me if I had one.”
Damon sets the megaphone aside. “More exciting than I thought, and I’ve been thinking about it. What did you say next?”
I bang my head multiple times. “That it wasn’t small, per se.”
Damon swings his legs off the couch, grinning. “Tea?”
“Two sugars. How’s your house looking?”
“Still hate living with me?”
I jerk my gaze to him, sitting with his lips tipped in the barest smile. “No, no that’s not . . .” In fact, he’s been surprisingly easy to live with. And Fidget and I have a thing going where I hold up letters, trying to teach him how to spell Damon’s name in the pebbles to inform the police in the case I’m found dead in my bed.
I don’t want him to leave.
I clear my throat. “I’m sorry about the fire, Damon.”
He runs a heavy hand through his hair. There’s a rip under the arm of his t-shirt. “The house’ll be prettier when I’m finished, and I’ve attached a granny flat.”
“Granny flat?”
“For Martha.”
Something dangerously soft fills my chest. “You two are close.”
“There’s a reason I call her Mar.” Ma. Mother.
I hesitate. It’s none of my business, but . . .
“You can ask, Leon.”
I meet his quietly encouraging eyes. “What about your own parents?”
“I was too much of a rascal. Never would listen. Always running off, getting into scrapes. They used to be happy coming here every summer. All the nanas helped look after me.”
“Martha.”
He nods.
“Is she the reason you moved here?”
“It’s nice to feel accepted. People here accepted. She made sure of it.”
Heat builds behind my eyes and I blink it all back. “They really never found out who set the fire?”
Damon pauses for a moment, and I hope he hasn’t glimpsed the sheen in my eyes. But no, he’s not looking at me, he’s frowning into the middle distance. Mind elsewhere. Then he shakes his head vigorously. Too vigorously.
All my senses ping. “Oh my God, did you do it?”
He slants me a look of disbelief. “Is that what you think of me?”
“Um, nope?”
He closes his eyes with a sigh. “I didn’t set my home on fire.”
“But—”
His eyes flash, less with anger than hurt. A sick feeling hits my stomach. I wish I could take it back. Damon isn’t the type to do something so underhand. He might once have fooled around too much, but . . . even that guy might have changed.
Still, I think he knows something. “I think you know something.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You do know something.”
“Leave it. Please.”
There’s a heavy, tragically tired tone in his voice, and the sick feeling in my stomach worsens. I nod.
He delivers me a grateful smile, and sweeps his hair back again—
“Take your shirt off.”
His brow pings.
I wave towards the rip under the arm. “I’ll fix it.”
“The last time I left clothes around you, I never saw them again.”
“You deserved that.”
“I deserve a lot of things.”
My dick jumps at the leer, and I’m not happy how little control I have over it.
Damon peels off his loose cotton shirt, revealing tight muscles and more than half of his hips. A fringe of pubic hair peeks over the waistband of his jeans. Yeah, so this might’ve been a mistake.
Damon laughs and tosses his shirt at me. I catch it and wave at him to scooch out of my sight—
A knock on the door.
Clutching Damon’s gloriously Damon scented shirt, I leap up, lunge past him, and crawl into the kitchen. I peek out the window. Dammit. Windbreaker and gel-flattened hair. Karl.
I glance around nervously for some shoes and a jacket, something I can escape onto the windy beach in. Damon has his hands on his hips, watching me in bewilderment.
Another knock. “I know you’re there, Leon. Your car’s here, and I heard the floorboards creak.”
There’s no way I’m opening that door. I crawl over and whisper at Damon’s knees. Actually, it’s more towards the phone in his pocket. Actually, a little towards another bulge. “You answer it.”