Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Massive. F**king. Arms.
“Whoa, nice save there, Nathan,” Jackie mentioned before returning to the game.
My eyes rose as my heart began to pound against my rib cage when I met his stare. This time, the pounding of said heart wasn’t from excitement. It was from disgust.
Nathan. F**king. Pierce.
As if my evening could get any worse.
Nathan stood there with my champagne bottles in his arms. He had enough nerve to smile at me with his toothy, all-American grin. I hated that smile more than anything, and I went out of my way to avoid said smile since he had moved back to Honey Creek, Illinois.
Nathan Pierce wasn’t simply the boy who got away—he was the one who freaking sprinted. I wasn’t certain I hated anyone with a deeper passion than that man standing in front of me. With an annoyingly impressive physique sculpted through countless hours on the baseball field, his powerful six-five frame made me feel tiny beside him. I wasn’t even short at my five-nine height, but Nathan made me feel like a pathetic ant when he stood near me.
Not only was he massive in size but he was massive in heart, too. His features were so warm and welcoming, which drove me up a wall. Everyone in town loved the man. Probably because he was once-upon-a-time famous. People in Honey Creek loved anything that had a touch of success attached to it. Even though Nathan’s career did crash and burn.
Since his return to town, I had watched him from a distance. His deep-set brown eyes were intense and expressive. He could express a million words solely with his eyes, and once upon a time, I could decipher every syllable. He had rich, smooth ebony skin that seemed to glow with health, even in the wintertime. His smile drew people in with its warmth, and the rugged handsomeness about him made women toss themselves at him as if they were at a 1980s New Kids on the Block concert. The light stubble that framed his jawline and the way he wore his baseball hat with a very prominent bend to the bill brought him an amount of effortless charm and attractiveness.
For anyone other than me, that was.
To me, he looked stupid.
Stupid and ugly.
Ugly and stupid.
His smile stretched wider. It made my skin crawl like a million spiders were unleashed over my whole body. I’d never had a smile that made me want to upchuck until I received one from Nathan Pierce.
“Hey, Avery,” he said.
My gosh.
I wished he had forgotten my name because the last thing I needed to hear was it rolling off his tongue. Wesley was my current love, and Nathan was my first. He was the man who made me hate men. My man-hating villain story, one might say. The one who left scars on my heartbeats many years before he ran off to win the World Series for California.
Twice.
Wesley was the redemption arc for my hatred of men. Well, until pretty Miss Drew showed up.
Now I was back to hating all men again.
Especially the one holding my champagne.
I snatched the bottles from his hold as I stared at him with piercing hostility. “Don’t talk to me,” I ordered with sharp disdain. I didn’t say another word as I walked out of the liquor store and stomped my feet all the way back home.
Leave it to Nathan to ruin a perfectly happy touchdown moment with his mere existence.
“Okay, I get it,” Wesley said as he twirled some dice between his fingers after his friends left for the evening. “You’re upset.”
“Am I?” I huffed as I took the emptied bottles of champagne to the recycling bin. I hated when he did that—when he told me what I’d been. If I was upset, I wanted to come to that realization on my own. I didn’t need Wesley to tell me I was upset. That only annoyed me more.
After returning from the liquor store, I had to put on a brave smile and function as if I wasn’t bothered so Wesley’s friends wouldn’t think I was some raging drama queen. Even though I was, indeed a raging drama queen. I started noting every little comment Drew made toward Wesley, and I counted every time she found a way to touch my fiancé.
Forty-seven times.
She touched him forty-seven freaking times!
“You are, and that’s completely understandable,” Wesley said as he followed me to the kitchen with the almost-empty charcuterie board. “I should’ve told you about Drew.”
“You mean you should’ve mentioned that your best friend was a woman and that you two used to date each other? You should’ve mentioned that your ex-girlfriend was coming to our place instead of having me find that information out during a game of charades? Yes. Yes, you should’ve. You’ve never even mentioned dating anyone before me.”
“That’s because no one mattered before you.”