AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
Dean
I had a problem. Besides the desperate need to gulp down air, I had trouble keeping my attention ahead of me.
For two weeks, the evil woman next to me had worn leggings and a bra to the gym every single day.
Abra. That was it. A few inches covering her chest, leaving a large expanse of skin open along her torso and back. Of course, they were always black, but today, her bra was shiny with a little Nike swoosh in the corner.
I didn’t know when I started having a thing for women who were straight as a board with a distinct six-pack, but here I was, trying not to slobber all over Taylor fucking Novak.
“You giving up already?” she asked.
I took my treadmill down to a slow walk. “I gotta head out early.” When she arched her brow, I explained, “Poker night.”
“Poker night?”
“Yeah.” I planted my hands on my hips. “Something I do with friends. You have heard that term before, right?Friends?”
“Vaguely.” A ghost of a smile graced her lips.
Not that the two of us often gossiped together, but I racked my brain for any time I’d heard her talking about friends, and I couldn’t think of any.
“What are you up to this weekend?” I asked in an effort to find out more. “Big plans? Sleepover and pillow fight with your girlfriends?”
“If this is your piss-poor attempt at an invite, it’s not working,” she said, keeping steady pace as she ran. She was like a goddamn greyhound, barely broke a sweat. I didn’t know how she did it.
“So, you are having a sleepover? What would one wear? Something slinky?”
“You wish. And no sleepovers for me. That stopped in middle school.”
As I was a thirty-year-old man, my memories of what my sister did in high school were hazy, but I was sure she was still sleeping at her friends’ houses then, and I was unable to stop the question before it came out of my mouth. “Seems young to quit sleepovers with your friends.”
“My dad got sick when I was fourteen. Staying up late, talking about boys, seemed insignificant when your father’s dying.”
She said it so evenly, so plainly, it knocked the wind right out of me, and I turned the treadmill off. I couldn’t keep walking with that revelation sitting right there. I’d known the family history, that Barbara’s elder son, Samuel, the one who would’ve taken over the Philadelphia office, passed away from brain cancer.
“Was high school hard after that?” I asked because I’d almost dropped out of law school when Patrick had died.
She kept right on running as she answered. “Most people probably think his dying made me a bitch, but I was one before that. I never had much patience for people. Never felt the need to belong or join or whatever.”
“Can’t picture you as a Girl Scout.”
She snorted a laugh. “Definitely not.” She hit the console to lower her speed to a brisk walk. “After my dad…the few friends I had stopped inviting me. Nobody wants to be friends with the sad and angry girl.”
After a moment, I stepped off my treadmill and stood next to hers, curving a hand around the frame of her machine. “So, what’s your excuse now?”
“For what? Not having friends?” She swiped the back of her hand along her forehead then sipped from the water bottle she had placed in the cupholder. “I’m still the sad and angry girl, and I’d rather not like anyone to know.”
“You let me know.”
She stopped her machine and hopped down to the floor right in front of me. Without her heels, she actually had to lift her chin to meet my eyes, and I took endless joy from that. She smelled of sweat and her godforsaken cinnamon-and-flower scent. I was now convinced hell didn’t smell of fire and brimstone, it smelled of Taylor Novak.
“Because deep inside, you’re a sad and angry boy too,” she told me, and I ticked my head to the side, wondering if Satan had granted her superpowers when he set her free on earth. In answer to my silent question, she said, “You put on the show that I refuse to.”
If I weren’t already hot and sweaty, I would have become so. “I have friends. I like my friends. Love them.”
“So, why don’t you tell them?” she asked casually, as if she hadn’t punched me right in the throat. She strolled away, toward the wall, where she sat down, stretching out her legs, reaching her fingers to her toes.
