Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 129408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Like I said, fucked-up system.
I whirled around on my heel, trying for casual. My eyes met steel first—the shield pinned on top of his perfectly pressed uniform, which covered his perfectly defined pec. My gaze traveled upward, noting the cords in his throat, the movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed, the square and smooth jaw, always perfectly shaved. Then I got to the eyes. The ones that were the perfect shade of turquoise. If you asked me what my favorite color was in public, I’d say black, like my coffee and my soul. If you really asked me, I’d say turquoise with flecks of green, like Luke’s eyes. Of course, I’d never say that out loud.
Usually on the occasions I’d met those eyes, they were as hard as actual turquoise. Now they were liquid stone, twinkling with amusement.
That told me that there was no one else around, the halls empty. I knew Luke would never look at me with anything resembling affection if he had witnesses. He had a reputation to uphold, after all. And so did I, for that matter.
Fraternizing with the enemy wouldn’t do well for either of us.
But that wasn’t what made my heart fracture the ribs containing it when our eyes locked. Maybe it was part of it, the fact that he was forbidden. Different. But it was more than that. He was everything I couldn’t have. Everything I wasn’t.
And a lot of other things I couldn’t explain. Couldn’t pinpoint.
I struggled to compose myself, structure a cheeky smile on my face. “Well, a girl’s gotta find fun where she can in this Podunk town,” I said with a lightness I hoped didn’t sound as forced as it was.
Luke returned my smile, crossing his arms across his chest. I tried not to focus on the way his biceps flexed when he did that. I failed. I was a teenager with a mess of hormones, after all. It wasn’t just boys who had sex on the brain. It was girls who had barely been kissed thanks to everyone in a sixty-mile radius being too scared of their brother’s wrath to even touch her.
Though I wasn’t interested in boys touching me.
“Hmmm,” he pondered, the vibration of that sound in the air creating goose bumps on my exposed arms. “So you didn’t do that in order to stop bullies from hurting a shy and fragile girl?” he asked playfully, his eyes hardening slightly.
“Who me?” I asked, pointing at my chest with faux dramatics.
I didn’t miss the way his eyes flickered, for less than a second, to my exposed cleavage.
I developed early, and dressed ‘provocatively,’ to quote the principal, so I was used to boy’s gazes flickering there. But not men’s.
I swallowed roughly. “Never,” I said, breathless. “I’m the bad girl, remember? I blow up things for fun. You won’t tell on me, will you? Rat me out to the cops?” I paused, focusing on his badge. “The other cops.”
He furrowed his brow, smile disappearing with my insinuation, my subtle reminder for him, and me, of our respective positions on either side of the law.
“I’m guessing if someone’s BMW does go down in flames, you’ll have no knowledge and an airtight alibi?” he said by way of answer.
I grinned, megawatt and completely fake. “Ding, ding, ding!”
He regarded me. “You’re different than them, Rosie. You always have been. I don’t want to see you get hurt. You’re a good person.”
The words, the seriousness of them, punctured me. Right in the stomach. For all the wrong reasons.
I cocked my hip, my own brow furrowing. “No, I’m not different than them. And I’m not ashamed of that. Because it means that I’m not the same as everyone else, all of these people.” I waved toward the empty halls. “The people you serve and protect. The people who torment innocents because it’s fun and most likely that’s what their parents do to them. Good is a construct, Officer. Just like bad. They don’t exist. Not in my world, at least. Like I said, I’m just trying to get out of this alive. Have some fun.”
He stared at me a long time after that. Really looking. Really seeing. Or maybe it was a trick of the light. A hallucination brought on by the fantastical hope that life might actually be like all those books and movies. He even opened his mouth, preparing to say something… real. I could feel it, the way the air was charged with someone electric.
But then it fizzled as he shook himself back into the uniform that held him and his worldview together.
“Fun and trouble aren’t usually mutually exclusive for most people,” he said instead.
I hid my disappointment well. Oscar-worthy, I reckoned. “Well, I’m not most people.”
His eyes twinkled again. “I’ve noticed.”
“Have you really?” I asked, my façade breaking to whisper those three words.