Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
I take another sip of my latte and smile back at her over the cup. “Hell yes I am.”
We enter an excessively large home goods store, one of my favorite places to shop, and both of us grab carts from a row near the door. We wander through each aisle, picking up items and putting them back down. More than a few go into my cart. A new set of dish towels. A pretty shower curtain. It’s freeing to be able to put my own touches on my place. I can decorate however I want and it wasn’t until this moment that the realization hits me. I’ve never had a place of my own. I’ve never truly been on my own.
“What do you think of this?” I ask Scarlet, holding up a welcome mat.
“Oh my God, ‘Take off your shoes and bring in the booze?’ It’s cute,” she says. “It’s so you. Get it.”
I toss it into the cart with a smile that won’t quit. It comes with another new feeling too. Declan pays me so well that I don’t have to calculate the cost down to the penny and hunt for a coupon. I still have a coupon, though. I wouldn’t come to this store without one.
I might be saving up, but I would rather be frugal and save where I can.
We turn onto the bedding aisle and I let out a cheerful sigh.
“I’m so happy for you, Braelynn,” Scarlet says. I told her about the fitted sheet. We’re actually here on that mission, although the two hours we spent wandering while chatting and my already half-full cart would say otherwise, and it feels damn good. The aisle is exactly how I pictured it would be. Sheets in all colors and materials.
I let my fingers trail down the row of them as I search for the perfect sheets.
“I think I’m going to get a whole set.” The fitted sheet was a small dream. I imagined just one piece of cloth. Enough to make my bed comfortable and not much more. With the check deposited, and a cushion already in savings, I have plenty to get a full set.
We start to wander slowly down the aisle, and I see one and then another that I like. One’s an abstract peony in soft muted colors, the other an off-white with a texture to it. “I want to look at them all before I decide,” I tell Scarlet, although it’s more me to myself so I don’t grab every single one that strikes my fancy.
“Do you work today?” she asks.
“Yes,” I murmur, running a sample of a flannel set between my fingers. It’s very soft, and it would probably be too hot for my place. Flannel sheets aren’t necessarily year-round sheets. More of a winter item. A bit expensive, I think to myself … but then I remember. I can have any set of sheets I want.
“You working every day now?” Scarlet hands me another set to look at. I take my time with it. My shift isn’t until this evening, every night at six, so there’s absolutely no rush. I nod to her, and she smiles. “He must really like you.”
“It’s intense,” I find myself admitting. It doesn’t seem like a good thing or a bad thing to say, just a neutral description of how Declan is. “He’s intense.”
“I think everybody at The Club would agree with you,” Scarlet murmurs. “All the Cross brothers are like that. They’re all broody, my way or no way … is he like, all gruff all the time?”
A bit of nervousness creeps into my thoughts. “I know he’s trying with me.” I think of him coming into my apartment with takeout and insisting on talking. It had to be hard for him.
Men like Declan don’t have the chance to grow up talking about emotions and apologizing, hell a lot of people don’t live with that simple comfort. I know I’m one of the luckier ones only because of my mother. But men like Declan? Hell no. They grow up focusing on survival above everything else. Simply living to see the next day. I know it wasn’t easy for him to sit with me and say he was sorry for how things had gone … and then do it again the next day. “It takes a lot for a man like him, but he’s working at it.”
“So you two are really involved, then?”
I don’t answer her. Mostly because I’m not exactly sure and I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to be given an answer that pops the bubble of content that I’m in. We look through several more sets of sheets. I’m excited to choose one, but at the same time … I’m wondering something else. I’m wondering where Declan sleeps. I wonder what his bedroom is like, and whether he likes sheets in a dark hue or a light one. If he likes a comforter that’s big and fluffy or heavy. These are the simple things about a person that are impossible to know unless you actually go to his house and sleep in his bed.