Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 98643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Since I couldn’t really see my surroundings, I used my beloved, once white Mongolian wool wrap to soak up all the crap that covered my face. Tears, dust, and the remnants of my mascara, blush, and shiny, clear gloss covered the long delicate strings of the very expensive wool from the front side. The back side was covered in God only knew how much of my tormenters’ spit.
Despite that knowledge and my somewhat drier and cleaner face, I kept the wrap on. I supposed it was my way of pretending nothing had happened.
Even that kiss.
Especially that kiss.
I forced the memory of the kiss to the back of my mind because I just couldn’t deal with it. I climbed out of the car and brushed as much of the lingering dust off my clothes as I could so there’d be less of it in the car. Brooks was going to freak when he saw the condition I’d left his expensive rental car in.
I sighed and sat sideways in the driver’s seat so I could look at the land that lay before me. Since I had yet to see a car on the road, I wasn’t worried about leaving the Range Rover’s door wide open.
That was the one thing I still liked about Wyoming and what had drawn me to the state in the first place.
The space… the kind that when you needed some space, you actually got space.
I stared at the land of nothingness before me. It was like being on a completely different planet. No jam-packed city sidewalks, no honking horns, no people yelling into their cell phones as they walked past you. Hell, I was one of those people. Or at least I had been up until a few days earlier when I’d made the insane decision to fly to Wyoming to support my best friend, Brooks, as he navigated a troubling reunion with the guy he’d been in love with for most of his life.
I’d met Brooks’s man several nights earlier, and it had been hate at first sight for both of us. My low opinion of the guy had started long before I’d met him in person. Multiple phone calls from Brooks, who also happened to be my boss, had held a certain sadness to them and though it had taken me a bit of time, I’d managed to pry out of him that Xavier, the good-looking foreman of the ranch Brooks’s uncle owned, was the reason for Brooks’s despair.
Xavier had wanted to squash me under his shoe like an errant bug from the moment he’d seen me dancing with a reluctant Brooks when I’d insisted Brooks take me to one of the very few gay clubs in Casper. I’d been worried that flying uninvited to Wyoming to support Brooks would only upset him further, but he’d seemed happy to see me when he’d met me at the airport.
My belief that it took finding a new guy to get rid of an old one had been the only thing on my mind when I’d practically dragged Brooks onto the dance floor at the club. The poor man had been as stiff as cement, but after a few minutes of dancing, including a sexy bit where I’d rubbed myself all over him like I was his own personal lap dancer for the night, he’d started to lighten up, especially when he’d realized I was only messing with him. When he’d finally begun dancing, I’d hoped that he had finally found a few minutes’ peace from having to deal with the crap Xavier and the rest of Eden were putting him through.
Xavier’s unexpected arrival at the club, along with the looks of warning he’d been sending me, had made it obvious that he was under the misconception that Brooks and I were lovers, and I hadn’t tried to dissuade the man. Hell, I’d done the opposite and played on Xavier’s jealousy. The night had ended as I’d hoped—with Brooks leaving with Xavier—but a lot of weird shit had gone down in between. I only hoped that my friend had found what he’d been needing for so long.
Funny thing was, I wasn’t even one hundred percent sure if Brooks and I were truly friends, let alone best friends. From the moment I’d met him, I’d always felt a weird connection with him, though it hadn’t been physical or romantic. Brooks had operated so much like a machine that I hadn’t been able to tell what he thought of me. One could say I’d kind of wormed my way into his life to the point that even with no real office skills, he’d hired me to be his assistant in his father’s investment firm.
In all honesty, I hadn’t just come to Wyoming to support the man I longed to call my best friend. I’d also come because it’d been the first opportunity I’d ever had to leave New York City and go someplace else… anyplace else. When I’d seen the pictures of the state after googling it, I’d known I had to see it in person because the idea that something so beautiful and unspoiled existed in real life had been hard to believe.