Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
“Careful,” he says and tosses me the keys to the ill-gotten Porsche. “I can’t have you spreading such vicious lies.”
As I’m getting acclimated to the driver’s seat, Lawson buckles himself in. “I assume you’re familiar with driving stick?”
“Huh?”
“You have done this before?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, once or twice.”
He shakes his head with a genuine chuckle. “No better way to learn.”
Surprising both of us, I get the car in gear and drive back out on the road. Thankfully the traffic is almost nonexistent.
“Like riding a bike,” I say when the gears protest to my determined shifting.
He snorts.
It takes a few miles, but I get the hang of it, those lessons from my aunt over summer vacation coming back to me quickly. Her old Chevy pickup was a bit less precious about the clutch than this one, though.
“Hey, you hungry?” I see a sign for an old-fashioned creamery and convenience store up the road that makes ice cream from its own milk cows in the pasture out back. “They have soft serve.”
“Fuck, that’s adorable.”
“What?”
“I was thinking a bar, but sure, ice cream sounds good.”
We end up in the center of a cute little town. The kind with lights strung up over the road between lampposts, and sidewalk cafes opening for dinner. After we get our ice cream, we decide to take a stroll past the shop windows of mom-and-pop joints preserved like a time capsule of pre-internet society.
We come to a small park in the center of town with a picnic table. I climb up and take a seat, licking a glob of butterscotch before it slides off the side of the cone. It’s starting to get a bit too cold out for ice cream, but mine is melting fast despite the cooling air temperature. I should have gotten it in a cup like Lawson did.
“Oh, I should have mentioned this before, but I can’t stay out obscenely late,” I warn Lawson, who hops up to sit beside me, lifting his spoon to his lips. “I have to get home and feed my bunny.”
He pauses mid-lick, slowly looking over at me. “Oh. Okay. Well, you need to work on your dirty talk. But I can work with this.” He’s biting his lip now, seemingly to keep from laughing. “How do we feed the bunny? You got a vibrator? Or just your fingers?”
I almost drop my cone. “Oh my God. No. I mean that in the literal sense. I have an actual bunny to feed.”
His forehead creases. “So we’re not talking about your pussy?”
“No.” My cheeks are scorching.
After a beat, he starts to laugh. Deep and genuine. “Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“You’re so fucking pure, I feel dirty just sitting here next to you. You have a pet rabbit?”
“Sort of?” I fill him in on the rabbit rescue of the other night.
Meanwhile, he’s gazing at me in fascination, as if he walked into a remote village somewhere in the Amazon and discovered a new species. I get the feeling he genuinely can’t relate to me.
He confirms this when he says, “Who the fuck are you, Casey?”
“What?” I say defensively.
He seems a bit unnerved, another groove digging into his forehead. “You fought off a bunch of foxes—”
“I didn’t fight them off—”
“—to rescue an orphaned rabbit, and now you’re literally handfeeding the damn thing like Snow fucking White. People like you exist in animated movies, not real life.”
“You sound like Fenn.” I hate even bringing him up, but it slips out before I can stop myself.
That makes Lawson snort. “Fenn and I are nothing alike. He’s the Disney prince to your Disney princess. Dude thinks he’s all dark and tortured, but it’s the kind of surface torment you find on teen soaps. He wouldn’t last a day in the same house as my father.”
I don’t miss the bitterness that colors his tone. Sloane told me once that Lawson’s dad is some kind of supervillain, but she hadn’t offered any details.
“And how does your father torment you?” I ask curiously.
Lawson becomes unusually close-lipped, and I regret asking, suddenly realizing I might be treading beyond TMI territory. For all I know, he’s been dealing with domestic abuse or worse. And I, a virtual stranger to him, am the last person he probably wants to confide in.
“It’s fine,” I say, reaching over to touch his knee. “Don’t answer that.”
His gaze lowers to my hand. He gets a strange look but doesn’t push my hand away.
“Yeah, we’ll save that for another time,” he says with a dismissive shrug. “Tell me more about your bunny.” He winks. “How does the breastfeeding work? Do you burp it after?”
Unfazed, I bite into a piece of my waffle cone. “I use a syringe. And there’s no burping required. But I do have to rub her button with a cotton ball after I feed her so that she goes to the bathroom.”