Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 121764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“Shoes, of course. I’m not a monster.”
Grace laughed, and the sound was so fucking sweet I felt it like a longing pain in my chest, the kind you get when you recall a memory of someone no longer in your life.
Maybe it was my body reminding me how off limits she was.
“I think you missed out on the gooch opportunity, frankly,” she said, and then she reached down and thumbed off both of her high heels, holding them by the straps in one hand. “Imagine how fun it could be for your… partner.”
“Is this you telling me you like to be kicked in the twat? Because weird but also intriguing.”
She snapped her gaze to mine. “Why do you think it would ever be me?”
Grace held that serious expression long enough to make the smile melt off mine.
“Fuck, I didn’t—” I cursed inwardly as my chest tightened with a zip of anxiety at what I’d said. “I was just—”
“Gotcha.”
She pointed her finger at me, no doubt delighting in the way all the blood had drained from my face. I stood there with my mouth open like a guppy as her head fell back on a loud laugh before she pushed off the wall and did a little spin, her heels twirling in her hand over her head.
She stopped suddenly, her eyes wide like she just had an idea.
“Give me your phone,” she said, holding her hand out.
I was still rebounding from her little joke, and I blamed the witchcraft she admitted to earlier for how I obeyed her command without hesitation.
Grace thumbed out her number and saved it in my phone before tossing it back to me.
“There. Now you have my number.”
I’d no sooner caught the thing before Grace was twirling again, humming to herself as her bare feet danced on the dirty ground.
I slid my phone into my pocket just in time for her to trip and fall into me.
I caught her hips in my hands as she laughed, and then she smiled up at me, holding her heels in one hand while the other just barely curled in the fabric of my dress shirt over my abdomen.
All the jokes evaporated into thin air.
I was suddenly aware of everything — the music spilling out from the bar, the warm breeze blowing down from the oaks, the way the light played with the shadow on her face, how she was pressed against me, every inch of her, and how her eyes flicked between mine as she pressed up on her toes.
Those eyes fell to my throat when I swallowed, and her tongue slid the length of her lower lip before she dragged her gaze back to meet mine.
“Want me to read your palm?” she asked.
My jaw ached from how hard I clenched it, my restraint wearing thin as I removed a hand from her hip and held it between us.
She cradled my palm in her own, dragging her fingertips along the lines that creased my skin. She tilted her head side to side on a smile, tapping one that spanned the length of my knuckles.
“Says here that you’re tired,” she said. “Like you’ve been bearing the weight of expectation for so long that your knees are buckling.”
I knew she was bullshitting, but the accuracy of that statement knocked what was left of my smile clear off my face.
Grace didn’t look at me as she moved to the next line. “But this,” she said with another tap. “This tells me you’re on the path to rediscovery, that your priorities are about to shift, and you’ll find true happiness.”
Again, more bullshit.
But it intrigued me, nonetheless.
“Oh…” she mused, squinting at a small, faint line right in the center of my palm. She held my hand up as if to inspect it closer under the Edison lights. “This is interesting.”
“What?”
“Well, you see this line here?” she asked, running her fingertip along it. “This really faint one that kind of splits into two different roads?”
I nodded.
Grace peeked up at me, the green in her eyes like a deep forest in the low light of the courtyard. “It says you’re going to kiss me one day.”
Those words hung between us, playful in nature and yet sticky like quicksand.
I swallowed, nose flaring when she guided my hand back to her hip, closing what was left of the space between us.
Don’t be fucking stupid, Jaxson.
Teammate’s. Little. Sister.
The warning might as well have been a flimsy spider web, for how easily I swatted it away.
“I thought you had a boyfriend,” I ground out, my heart hammering in my chest. I told myself to let her go, to walk away, but my hands had a mind of their own, and they only gripped her to me tighter.
“I can’t have friends if I have a boyfriend?” she asked, breathlessly — which fucked up her attempt to sound innocent.