Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 83221 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83221 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
I lean forward and kiss her pretty lips again. I’d spend hours worshiping her mouth if I could.
“When can I see you again?” she asks between kisses. “Besides class.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I promise. “We just have to be careful.”
“We will be.”
I kiss her once more, savoring her essence before pulling away. My dick is stone in my jeans, but I do my best to ignore it. “Go back inside and close the window. I want to make sure you’re safe before I go.”
She melts at my words, offering me a cute grin. “Yes, Mr. Park.”
“You’re not making it easy for me to leave. Go before I do something insane like kidnap you.”
An adorable laugh rumbles from her. She obeys, though, and slips back into the house. After she moves her milkshake off the ledge, she leans back out the window.
“One more kiss for the road?”
God, this girl is going to kill me.
“Yeah, sweetheart. One more kiss for the road.”
One turns into three more before I finally drag myself away from her addicting presence. It’s not until her window is down and the curtains are drawn do I finally breathe normally again.
The best bar in town is a little shithole called Knock It Off near PMU. Park Mountain University is one of the town’s historical landmarks. Every time the university tries to revamp the area surrounding the college and buy out Knock It Off to no doubt replace it with a bougie-ass coffee shop, the patrons of Knock It Off show up in droves, making it impossible for the owner, Kitty Robbins, to sell. She has a cash cow and knows it. No one can afford to make her move. You’d think with all the money rolling in, she’d update the eyesore.
Kitty calls it vintage.
Me and Hugo call it a dump.
But it’s our favorite dump, so we deal with it.
I push through the glass door and am met with a wall of heavy smoke. Neither me nor Hugo smokes, which is another reason why we should hate this place, but we don’t. I find him seated at a booth in the back, fiercely texting on his phone with two bottles of locally brewed beer on the table in front of him.
Rat or some other equally heinous ’80s metal band rages through the speakers. A woman with huge tits and bleached white hair wriggles her fingers at me as I pass. I give her a tight smile but don’t stop. I’m not in the mood to socialize with the locals.
“Hey, man,” I bark out, earning Hugo’s attention.
My brother, though older by two years, wears his age better than I do. Where I’m all scowls and frowns, giving me wrinkles on my brow, he’s always smiling, which gives him the appearance of being younger.
“What’s up, Cal? Why do you look sketchy as fuck?”
I snort out a laugh and shove my hood off my head and sit across from him. “Just prowling the neighborhoods, checking in to see if my students are doing their homework.”
“I feel like you’re not joking and that makes me worry for you.” He smirks. “How’ve you been, little bro? I haven’t seen you in ages.”
Hugo is always dramatic. I see him every Sunday without fail.
“Been busy. From the looks of it, so have you, AG.”
He straightens and flashes me a politician smile that’ll take him places one day. Probably all the way to the goddamn White House. “Tomorrow we’re making the announcement. I’d like everyone to be there. Naturally, Jude won’t come, but I’d like my other two brothers there.”
Jude never leaves his house unless it’s for Sunday dinner. Other than that, he stays holed up in his dark, outdated house, feeling sorry as fuck for himself.
“I’ll be there,” I assure him. “I’ll even be nice to Dad.”
He winces. “You know I’m sorry, right? I wanted to be the one to tell you.”
“It’s fine. Dad gets off on catching me off guard. Remember that time he surprised me by fucking my girlfriend and knocking her up?”
Hugo’s humor fades and he looks down at his beer bottle. “That was fucked up, man, but it was nearly twenty years ago. Don’t you ever just want to move on?”
His words are a punch to the gut.
“Kind of hard when you have to see the betrayal every week,” I remind him. “Dad hasn’t taken anything from you, so you don’t get it.”
He picks up his bottle and takes a long pull, avoiding my stare. “Do you still love her? Is that why you’re still so mad?”
“Jamie?” I bark out a laugh. “Fuck no. Jamie slept with my father and got pregnant with his babies. I stopped loving her the day I found out.”
“Then why do you let it pull you down every day, Cal?”
I’m not exactly in the mood to mull over the past. Of course Hugo doesn’t get it. I’d thought I was going to marry Jamie. We had plans to go to college together and live in an apartment near campus. She was my high school sweetheart. Four years we were together. Dad and Jamie mindfucked me. They broke my fucking heart.