Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 106346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
“Um, yeah,” he says. “That one also.” He points at a truck and then the sleek black BMW next to it. “That one also.”
“You have four cars?” I ask him, and he puts his hand on my back and ushers me to get in the SUV.
“Does it matter?” he asks, and I want to say yes, it does, but he just continues. “It’s a car.”
“Yes,” I say. “Four. You own four cars.”
“Well, five,” he says. “I keep one at my parents’ house for when I visit.”
He smiles. “Now, let’s get Dylan home. He must be tired.”
“Smooth,” I say. “Very smooth.”
He looks at me and winks, and my stomach literally flutters. “Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet, sweetheart,” he says, closing the door.
“Mom,” Dylan calls from the back seat, and I turn around. “I really like him.”
“Yeah, baby,” I say, looking back to the front. “Me, too,” I say quietly under my breath.
Chapter Seventeen
Justin
“Four.” I hear her mumbling from beside me. She turns her back to the door and looks at me. “Four cars.”
As I look over at her, she’s still wearing my sweater even though it’s like a dress but she folds her arms over her chest. “I mean, five,” I joke with her, and she rolls her eyes.
“Sorry,” she says. “Five, you have five cars.” She shakes her head. “You see, right?”
I look in the rearview mirror and see that Dylan is slowly losing the battle to stay awake. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me right now.”
“I’m saying that we are literally night and day,” she says, but I interrupt her.
“We are two people who met and like each other. What does it matter how many cars I have?”
“You having all those cars is not the issue,” she says.
“So why are we still talking about this?” I wink at her. “If I had zero cars, would you like me more?”
“Well, no,” she says, and I laugh.
“That’s a step in the right direction.” I glance over at her, and she looks confused. “You admitted you like me.”
“That’s what you got from that?” she asks, then lowers her voice and checks to see that Dylan is now sleeping with his head to the side. “Out of everything I said, that is what you focus on?”
“Yup,” I say. When I hear her huff, I reach over and take her hand in mine. “Shh, you’ll wake him,” I say as I link my fingers with hers. I take in that she let me, and I also take in that she holds my hand back while she just looks outside for the rest of the drive.
When we pull up to her apartment complex, she shows me where to go, and I park in her parking spot. “You grab the food. I’m going to grab Dylan,” I say before she gets out. It looks like she is going to argue with me, but she doesn’t. She gets the food, and I slowly unbuckle Dylan and carry him in, following her. “He’s out cold.”
She opens the door and walks in and puts the bag of food on the table and then rushes into the bedroom. The house is literally a sauna. “I’m going to open the windows and get a breeze going,” she says, opening the windows, and I notice there is no breeze even when she does that.
I lay him on the bed, and he curls into the fetal position, but I take off his shoes and socks. “Will he be okay?” I ask, and she nods her head and takes off my sweater that she is wearing.
“Yeah, he’ll probably be out until tomorrow,” she whispers, and I walk out of the room, and she follows me.
“Do you want something to drink?” she asks me, and I nod my head. She goes to the fridge and opens the freezer to get some ice cubes out.
I turn to sit on the futon and wait for her. She walks back into the room holding two glasses and hands one to me. “Here you are.”
“Thank you,” I say and take a sip and then wait for her to sit down. “Tonight was fun.” I start the conversation, and I watch her as I talk. “I don’t know what the deal is with your parents or your siblings, and I didn’t want to ask about them in front of Dylan, but I want to know everything.”
“There really isn’t much to say,” she says, taking a gulp of water and then looking down at the glass that is already forming condensation on the outside. “My parents were …” she says and then corrects herself. “They are religious people, and they didn’t like the fact that their only daughter got knocked up at seventeen.” My heart sinks for her. “So when I told them I was pregnant, they gave me two options. One, give the baby up for adoption, which I was never going to do, or two, move out.”