Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79870 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79870 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Because it was closer to Kage.
And suddenly I was turning around and running down the hospital hallway, back to my mom’s room, because I thought maybe I had it. The password to the tablet. Or maybe I was just being egotistical or deluded, but it was worth a shot.
I nearly bowled over the two nurses who were leaving as I was coming back in, but I just mumbled a quick apology without looking up. I had one thing on my mind. I snatched the tablet out of the case and powered it up.
“What’s going on, Jamie,” my mom asked, struggling upright in the bed. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, Mom,” I assured her. “Just checking on something before I forget.”
“Okay, honey.” She cleared her throat, then resumed in her deliberately nonchalant voice that I could detect from a mile away. “Did you see Kadir, the nurse who was just in here? He’s going back to school to be a doctor. Very nice young man.”
“Mmm hmm,” I said distractedly, bouncing my knee as I waited for the password screen to appear on the tablet.
“Kadir asked what you do in college. I told him you were going for Journalism, and that you wanted to do the sports news on TV. Is that right? I told him you weren’t dating anyone right now.”
That got my attention. “What did you tell him that for? Has dad been running his mouth to you?”
She looked sheepish. “A little. Is that okay?”
“Oh, God…” I was embarrassed. I hadn’t even gotten used to my dad knowing, and now both of my parents knew. And Mom was looking at me with that do-gooder look, like she was about to start trying to hook me up with every unattached gay guy she came in contact with.
“It’s okay, Jamie. I don’t care. If that’s the way you feel, we’ll just learn to live with it.” She patted the bed beside her. “Come over here and let’s talk about it.”
“Mom, please don’t. No offense, but I’m not ready to talk about any of this stuff? You just concentrate on getting better, okay? We’ll talk soon.”
“But Kadir—”
“Mom, I’m not looking for anybody. I’m going back to Vegas, and we’ll see what happens. Now I have something to do right now, and I need to concentrate.” She looked so dejected, I felt awful. “I love you,” I told her.
“Love you, too.”
I turned my attention to the tablet. The password screen was way too familiar to me now. It taunted me with its blank white space that I couldn’t seem to fill properly. But I thought maybe I had it now. Because I felt like I had no place anymore unless it was near Kage, and maybe he felt the same about me. Maybe I was his favorite place to be. It was a hell of a stretch, and probably wishful thinking on my part, but I typed it in anyway.
Jamie. Nope.
My heart sank. How stupid was it to think I’d be that important to him anyway? He hadn’t even tried to contact me in the four days we’d been apart, meanwhile I’d been losing my mind. Here I was falling so hard for him, and he hadn’t even thought enough of me to share his favorite place with me. Maybe it truly was just sex for him, because he was a horny bastard, and the only place I knew he liked to be was in my ass.
I blinked. Looked guiltily up at my mom, then back at the screen.
It couldn’t be.
I typed in JamiesAss.
The screen went blank, then the desktop started to load. “That’s it!” I yelled. “Oh, my God, I guessed it!”
“What?” Mom asked.
“Oh, nothing, Mom. Sorry.” I went back to watching the screen load, watching his desktop populate with icons. There weren’t many. Clearly Kage did not use his tablet as much as I used my laptop. He wasn’t a Luddite, but he wasn’t a techie, either. He was a physical, real world kind of guy, and I liked that about him.
My heart was pounding at an alarming rate as I studied his tablet, trying to decide what to explore first. “I should not be doing this,” I mumbled to myself. “This is bad, this is so bad.”
Once I’d connected to the hospital wi-fi, I clicked on a link to his photos. It took me to his online phone backup, and I found a ton of photos. I could even see the photos he’d taken since going back to Vegas. He was supposed to be at a fighter’s camp, but it looked more like he was at the Playboy Mansion, with gorgeous bikini-clad girls all over the place. He’d gotten someone to take several pictures of him and a good-looking fighter with a prominent neck tattoo. There were also photos of a gym, and of some fighters horsing around and sparring, so I supposed if you opened your mind enough, you could imagine it was a fighter’s camp.