Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
He knew he was fuckin’ right.
Goddammit.
“When is it?” I growled.
“Christmas Eve.” He winced.
I studied the ceiling. “I’m not like Gunner. I’ve easily got thirty more pounds of muscle on me compared to him. I can’t just go pop off a fuckin’ marathon and not die from it.”
Like, seriously, no joke. I wouldn’t be able to do it.
“Oh, come on. Don’t be a pussy,” he said just as Gunner came up behind me and snorted.
I looked over at him and he flipped me the bird. “What are you looking at?”
He walked out the door, and I couldn’t help but think I was really fucking myself here.
Goddammit.
“So, what time should I pick you up?”
Fourteen
Do you think we’ve ever bought milk from the same cow twice?
—Calliope to Jasper
CALLIOPE
“Hello?” I answered, staring outside as I watched with awe and shock.
Snowing.
It was snowing on Christmas Eve.
What in the actual fuck?
Didn’t Texas know that it was Texas?
We didn’t get snow, and we certainly didn’t get it this early in the year…or at all.
But there it was, happening right in front of my face.
It wasn’t sticking, though.
In fact, the weatherman actually said that all this would be gone by the evening as a warm front blew through the area.
Tomorrow it was supposed to be sixty.
“What took you so long to answer? Damn,” Searcy grumbled. “I’ve been calling all morning.”
I looked at my watch.
Or, more accurately, the watch that was delivered to my porch today.
It was actually Jasper’s watch.
It was also a Rolex.
I had to look it up online to see how much money it cost, and my stomach ached a little bit at the price.
I was also in shock at how the delivery driver had just handed it over and didn’t ask me to sign anything.
He’d just handed me the box and left.
And since we’d been playing the stealing each other’s packages game since last week, I saw no reason to not open this one.
Though, when I saw the thoughtful note inside from a man named Haggard, which I thought might be Jasper’s sister’s man, I’d hesitated to put it on.
But, I mean, I was doing Jasper a favor. That was a twenty-eight-thousand-dollar watch he was just going to have delivered onto his front porch.
“Are you even listening to me at all?”
I sighed. “No. I was looking at the snow.”
“It’s snowing?” she shrieked.
“Yes,” I answered. “Like, literally right now.”
“Oh.” She paused. “No wonder you’re not paying attention…” I heard the sound of her footsteps, then the creak of her back door. “It’s not snowing here, you lying cow.”
“It’s snowing here.” I switched to FaceTime. “Look.”
She gasped. “That’s not fair!”
I smiled. “What was it that you called about?”
She grumbled darkly under her breath before saying, “Cutter and Jasper are running in a marathon today that runs right by your house.”
I blinked. “What?”
“They signed up for it last minute. Cutter had to finish one by the end of this year or they were auctioning off his bike. I’m not sure why Jasper agreed to do it, though. He really sucks at running, which was why he was originally exempt from the running a marathon thing that they did a while back in Hawaii. Cutter couldn’t run that one because he was sick as a dog. And he’s been putting it off ever since.”
I rubbed at my eyes. “When were they supposed to start this run?”
Just as I said that, a runner ran past wearing candy cane short shorts and nothing else.
He had to be freezing.
He also had a camera pointed at his face with a man riding an electric bike holding said camera.
I’d bet he was in first.
“About thirty minutes ago,” she answered. “You’re at the halfway point on the course. They make two loops. They’ll be passing you twice,” she said. “I wanted you to take pictures. No way am I going out today. It’s so damn busy.”
I agreed.
“Okay,” I said. “Is there a way to track him or anything?”
“You mean them?” Searcy quipped, unaware of my obsession with my grumpy neighbor. “They’re wearing numbers, and I think you might be able to track that. But I don’t know their numbers because they didn’t share that information before they started.”
I rubbed at my left eye while simultaneously keeping my eye on the street. “I guess I’ll go get my heated chair out of the garage and post up.”
“When’d you get a heated chair?” she asked.
I refrained from telling her last week, when I opened the large box that definitely didn’t belong to me and found the world’s greatest chair in there.
It actually worked pretty damn perfectly because I liked to sit out on my porch and watch the world go by. Sometimes I got chilly and had to wrap up in a blanket, but my backside always ended up staying cold due to the thin material of my chair.