Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 83190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
More snickers escape my mom convincing me to lift and face the device Harlow’s direction. “Mom meet my-” the sentence pitfall is poorly stumbled through causing me to arrive at a garbled, “guesthouse owner, Harlow.”
“And your boss. And the mother of your future child. And your wife-”
“Wife?!” My mother squawks in surprise.
Fuck!
Harlow instantly cringes and cuts her gaze to me. “You didn’t tell her about the marriage thing?”
“Wife?!” she shrieks for a second time.
The displeased sound spurs me to shake my head. “Yeah, I uh…I haven’t quite gotten around to that part yet.”
“You don’t think maybe you should’ve started there, you Teledummy.”
“When did you get married?!” Mom’s yelling reaches megaphone level. “Brendan Anders-”
“Hey, Mom,” I casually state, turning the phone to face me once more, “remember how I was saying I can’t be late for work? I meant it. I gotta go.”
“But-”
“I swear I’ll call you when I get off.”
“Brendan.”
“I’m good for it.”
“If you don’t, I’m gonna start looking at plane tickets to Texas.”
“You can borrow the plane!” Harlow needlessly volunteers, prompting panic to spur in my stare.
Mom victoriously smirks at the same time she states, “Don’t make me take her up on that offer.”
That would so not be a good idea right now.
“Love you, B.”
“Love you, too.”
Ending the video chat is immediately followed by me meeting Harlow’s amused grin. “She’s gonna ground you.”
“She can’t ground me, remember?” I rise to my feet and snatch my wallet off the nearby nightstand. “I’m a fucking grown ass man.”
“A grown ass man who needs to take that piercing out of his brow before work.”
I grunt in both irritation and gratitude over the reminder.
Like I get the fucking rule.
It makes sense.
It’s just…a pain in the ass to constantly take out and put in.
“And she should fucking ground you.” Harlow’s attention remains on me during the removal, the gentle toss of the jewelry onto the nightstand, and my walk over to her. “How could you not tell your mom?”
“Have you told your mom yet?”
“No,” she answers as I retrieve my runaway watch, “but nowadays I try not to talk to her without my lawyer present.” We share a small round of chuckles enroute to the front door prior to Harlow inquiring, “Seriously, though. Is there a reason you haven’t told her?” She noticeably fidgets with her zipper while I lock up the structure from the outside. “Are you…worried she’s…gonna hate me?”
“No.”
“Not like me?”
“No.”
“Disgusted by me?”
“Still no.”
“She probably will be,” the woman I can’t get enough of confidently declares. “Most moms can’t stand me. Own included.”
Joining her side again, we resume our strolling for the driveway, taking the path that’ll have us passing the outdoor cooking area versus the acres set up for her goats. “What? Why?”
“Why my own birth host hates me or others?”
Not sure I wanna have her shutdown and have to endure a long stretch of silent treatment on the way in to work, I reply, “Others.”
“The three that I’ve met in a ‘hey I’m fucking your son’ capacity all thought I was too loud, too brash, too abrasive, and totally lacked any sort of ‘home training’. But like is it my fault that I can never remember which fork is the shrimp fork?”
“Isn’t it the longer, narrower one?”
“That you know yet had never heard of the movie Slap Shot.”
That shit was a crime against hockey evidently. A crime that she punished me for by making me pay for the delivery pizza she only had one slice of—pregnancy sickness is a bitch it seems—as we watched the classic film.
Did I like it?
Not really. A bit uh…before my time.
Did I like watching her love it?
Fuck yeah.
Between her laughs and the playful arm punching that led to a little bit of wrestling, that shit definitely goes in the rewatch category.
“My mom’s not like that,” I casually insist, steering the conversation back on point. “She’ll probably fucking love you right after she gets over the fact that I didn’t tell her immediately, that she wasn’t invited, and that I didn’t propose so much as agreed that the situation was the right call.”
“What kind of man doesn’t even propose?” Harlow playfully pokes as we pass by the section of the pool that houses a swim up bar.
“What kind of woman can’t even remember the first time she fucked her husband?”
The counter jab causes her to shoot me an impressed, mirth-filled smirk along with a set of low moans.
And that’s the thing about sparring with Harlow.
She doesn’t just wanna dish out the shit.
She wants to take it too.
I watch her amused expression shift to a sexier one. “Promise I won’t forget the next time.”
There’s no ignoring the way her words stir my dick nor is there any denying the joy she gets in being a fucking cock tease.
It’s hard enough to concentrate on actual conversations about shit with her bouncing around in nothing but sports bras and booty shorts but add that to the way she shamelessly flirts with me every night during dinner or air hockey—even when Margot’s buzzing around—and let’s just say my dick is working out twice as much as I am at work.