Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 110113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
I slide my hand up her thigh. “I would die if I only saw Ella every other weekend.”
“I know you would.” She meets my eyes. “Most guys aren’t like you, Sawyer.”
“Maybe that conditioning you were talkin’ about didn’t work so well on me.”
“Maybe.” She searches my gaze, leaning in so her mouth is inches from mine. “Or maybe you’re just trying really hard to get laid.”
My eyes flick to her lips. “You’re distracting me.”
“Is it working?”
“You’re one hell of a distraction, Ava. Of course it’s working. I just wish you’d let me pick your brain a little more about all this.”
She extends her legs and lies down beside me. I roll onto my back and she cuddles up next to me, putting her head on my chest.
Above us, the sky is a clear, cold blanket of stars. Nothing quite like the show Mother Nature puts on out here in Hill Country.
“Start by telling me about you,” she says softly, drawing her fingertip across my sternum.
CHAPTER 23
Ava
LIFESAVER
I hear the rapid beat of Sawyer’s heart as his chest rises and falls on a deep inhale.
Is he nervous? Why? I hope he knows I’d never judge him for what he says. I’d like to think that by now he trusts me the way I trust him.
Or maybe he’s still processing the jarring realization that he and I have very different visions of what happily ever after looks like.
To be honest, I have no idea how to approach that mismatch. Should I even approach it at all? Seems way too serious to be talking about stuff like custody and marriage on a first date.
Then again, this isn’t a typical first date with the typical guys I saw after my divorce. Really, I feel like Sawyer and I have been on several dates at this point. I’m glad we’re getting to know each other on a deeper level. Glad we’re talking about shit that’s real, even if it does hurt a little knowing there’s a good chance we won’t end up together.
Because even though I know, rationally, that Sawyer deserves someone who’s less jaded and more open than I am, I can’t help but feel that we’re good for each other.
At least, I feel good when we’re together. I feel light and free and happy. I feel like myself. Right now in particular, I feel warm, the heat of the fire at my feet paling in comparison to the heat of Sawyer’s body that seeps through my clothes and fills my skin with this starry, buzzy rush.
The guy really is a furnace.
I just don’t know what to do with the fact that he wants the wife and the white picket fence. I have no interest in any of that.
I am, however, very interested in hearing his story.
So I keep tracing designs across his chest as I wait for him to start talking.
At last, he presses a kiss to the crown of my head, looping an arm around my shoulders before gathering me against him. It’s his turn to trail his fingertips over my arm, the motion quiet, almost absent. It still makes my skin break out in goose bumps beneath the layers of my jacket and sweater.
“Lizzie and I also knew each other in high school. We were really good friends back then. She was there for me when my parents died—”
“You were sixteen, right?”
“Yep.”
My heart plummets. “Sawyer. Wow. I’m so sorry. You were still a kid.”
“I was, yeah.” His swallow is audible. “Long story short, Lizzie and I always had this bond after that. The chemistry was never really there, but as we got older, I think we got bored and tried to convince ourselves that we could make our own chemistry. Hartsville is a small place. Neither of us had many options after we graduated. I was working on the ranch—everyone there was a dude back then—and she was trying to make it as a singer, so we started fooling around on and off. We never dated or anything. It was more of a friends-with-benefits situation.”
“And you kept waiting for it to turn into more.”
“Exactly. Neither of us could bring ourselves to commit, though. Then Lizzie got pregnant. We were both twenty-five, and for us … life wasn’t panning out how we’d hoped. So we thought, hey, maybe this is a sign from the universe that we should have this baby and be together. Start a whole new life as a family.”
My chest literally hurts when I think about what comes next. “I remember thinking that a baby would fix things.”
Sawyer scoffs. “We were stupid.”
“We were young and hopeful. Big difference.”
“Either way, it became apparent pretty damn quick that Lizzie and I weren’t meant to be together. Ella was well on her way by that point, so Liz and I decided we’d co-parent as friends. That’s been our arrangement ever since.”