Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 100202 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100202 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
“Callie,” I whispered. My heart was thundering now, panic creeping into my veins. I wasn’t capable of returning the emotion, and it would wreck her. I would destroy her. “Don’t love me. Please, don’t love me. I’m nowhere near good enough.” She deserved someone who could love her back just as fiercely.
I already hated whomever it was.
“Too late.” She shrugged. “I love everything about you, Weston Madigan, even when you’re driving me up the wall with your rules and your silence. I love you.”
“Fuck.” My grip shifted to her waist, and she slid her knee over me, straddling my lap.
“I love you.” She kissed my forehead. “I love you.” My cheek. “I love you.” My jaw. “And I’ll say it as many times as you need to believe it.” My lips.
I should have pushed her away, set her free before I could do any more damage, but instead, I kissed her right back. For the first time in my life, I needed someone more than I needed solitude. I needed Callie.
“I love you,” she whispered with every kiss. Every touch. She said it when I slid inside her and when she came. And it wasn’t just her words. She said it with her hands, her eyes, her entire body.
I fell asleep with those words engraved in my fucking soul.
She loved me, and I didn’t deserve it because I’d never risk loving her back, but I wasn’t capable of letting her go, either.
Guess I was the selfish asshole now.
It was dawn when I crept out of bed after kissing her forehead.
If I wasn’t going to let her go, then I had to find a way to make loving me worth her while.
Sutton was in the kitchen when I came down the stairs.
“You’re up early,” I said.
She startled, backing away from the kitchen island. “I was just…thirsty.” She went to the refrigerator and pulled out the carton of orange juice.
“Okay.” It was more than weird, but what did I really know about the early morning drinking habits of eleven-year-old girls? The thumb drive on top of the internship application I’d left out for Callie at the corner of the counter caught my attention. It had to be whatever photo she’d chosen. “She’s going to enter?” Pride had me smiling ear to ear.
“Looks like it,” Sutton said, pulling a glass from the cabinet.
I flipped the application over and ran my thumb over the signature required for the photo release. “Guess she is, since she signed it.” But there was something a little off about the E in her name.
“She’s going to place, maybe even win the amateur division,” Sutton said, nodding her head as she poured the juice into the small glass. “We both know it. She’s so good, and she shouldn’t hide it.”
Apprehension slid down my spine. “Sutton, did you sign this?”
She put the carton of orange juice away.
“Sutton?”
“Do you really want to know?” She faced me head on, tilting her chin in the same way Callie did when she’d made up her mind on a subject.
“This is a big deal,” I said slowly. “It’s not a pretend contract on our refrigerator, or some note to get you out of trouble at school.” Shit. What was I supposed to do with this?
“You have to enter for her,” Sutton whispered. “Everything is signed. The picture is right there. And the deadline is in a couple hours.”
“If she doesn’t want to enter, we can’t make her enter.” Even if it would skyrocket her personal portfolio. If she even touched the top twenty-five, she’d have national attention, the kind she deserved, the kind that would get her into the local gallery she’d set her sights on…if she’d just get out of her own way.
“Fine.” Sutton tensed. “If you won’t do it, then I will.” She reached for the application, and I jerked it back.
“Is that why you’re up this early? So you could just enter for her?”
“If it was your mom, wouldn’t you want the whole world to know how special she was?”
Ouch. She hit the nail on the fucking head.
“I’m not a little kid. I’m eleven. I know how hard it’s been for her to raise me all on her own. She should get to have this.” She must have seen me wavering, because she came toward me, the plea evident in her eyes. “Please let her have this.”
“If she doesn’t want it, we can’t make her,” I argued. Even if I agreed with Sutton, which I did, if Callie hadn’t been the one to sign this, and I couldn’t do it behind her back.
“She’s my mom. I know her. She won’t say it, but I’m the reason she’s not entering, just like I’m the reason she couldn’t finish college. She’s always been too busy taking care of me.”
I shook my head. “No. Sutton, you can’t blame yourself for—”