Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 59022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Maybe it’s the idea of him seeing me. The real me that’s impossible to hide when I first meet people. He’ll see my exterior and it’ll make him want to come closer…and then, boom, he’ll inevitably see the rough that’s just too much for guys. He’ll see the untamed parts of me that no matter how hard I try to keep hidden away—always find a way to sneak out, whether it’s through my eyes, my energy, or even my essence. My story always ends the same. With loneliness and a bleeding heart nobody will hold but me. Sometimes I don’t know how I survived up until this point. It’s the complexity of me.
Of Charlie Lyn Horseman, ladies and gentleman.
I can’t help that I’m an artist at heart any more than I can help breathing. Words are my kryptonite… and I weep and long for love maybe too desperately at times, or maybe it’s just I want to be accepted while also being seen.
For truth. It’s felt like a faraway dream… for forever.
I stare out the window to keep me from looking at him and almost hear my grandmother’s consistent voice—the only consistent in my subconscious other than my self-deprecating talk. “Charlie… you just need to find that one man. The one that gets you. That feels your torture and can calm the winds and ride the wave with you. The one who’s not afraid of your light. The one who wants to fan your flame… Just one.”
Just. One.
I just need one who’s willing to fan! Is that so hard to ask?
I continue to keep my gaze safely away from hot man’s and focus on his friend who’s good looking enough with his brown hair, hazel eyes and super friendly smile. In any other world he’d be the handsome guy you’d want to get to know, but in a world where a man squares off with a polar bear… there’s no winning for him.
“Jayson,” he says as he holds out his hand in greeting.
He eyes me warmly, ah friend zone, it’s been a hot minute.
“I think I saw you glued to the window,” he says with a laugh that fills the small space.
I nod uncomfortably. That’s some good eyesight.
“That was me,” I say guiltily wanting to raise my hand like I’ve just been caught.
“This is Stetson,” Jayson points at his friend who’s still staring at me in the most toe curling uncomfortable but comfortable way a girl could ask for. If Jayson’s friend zone, this one’s ‘one night stand it was fun we should do it again zone’. I knew both well, played in both sand boxes enough to know where the self-burying shovels are, thank you very much.
Stetson? I press my lips together to keep from smiling. Did he try out for Yellowstone? Was Rip taken? His name is Stetson? Holy arctic cowboy fuck… of course it is!
Now that his name has been tossed into the ring, I know I have no choice but to look up at him.
And when I do…
When our eyes lock again—this time with only a foot separating us—the world stops around me.
Everything. Stops.
Time.
Air.
Snow.
Cold.
The tundra.
And I’m just sucked right into the brightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. Eyes that don’t even feel like they’re from this world. They must be from another planet because what I’m looking at isn’t normal.
No man should look like this.
It should be illegal.
Seriously.
His ruggedly, handsome face, with a chiseled jaw that looks like it was sculpted by one of the masters is the stuff of wet dreams.
Vibrator stuff.
Fantasy worlds.
My God.
He’s even got a clean aristocratic looking short dirty blond beard I’d like to feel between my thighs—yes, I’m thinking that. My thoughts have already gone south in the best and worst of ways. It’s been a while.
I’m thinking all the dirty thoughts because I know this guy is hung and hot in every goddamn way. And he speaks to bears… no, he controls them! Manhandles them, God what would that feel like?
I mean real. Live. Bears! And guess what? They listen to him!
Sweet baby Jesus how can he be real?
I know I’m not the only effected one around because the girlfriends, especially overly eager Ellie are all staring at him like he’s a piece of A-5 Grade Wagyu beef they can’t wait to put their wealthy little mouths on.
Chomp. Chomp.
“Charlie.”
He says my name.
Let me rephrase that—he doesn’t just say it. He claims it. Like he’s said it a thousand years, a million times… like it’s second nature.
It’s his.
And yes, I want him to own it. My name. My body. My soul.
All of me.
Wait—
What the hell is wrong with me?
Does he have some sort of voodoo-magic-energy-pull thing going on?
He must.
I mean, he just stopped a polar bear dead in its tracks.
I wonder if she was female.
Because damn, that would check out, wouldn’t it?