Page 13 of Beyond our Forever

Chapter 4

Past

“Do you have to study this weekend?” Bruce asked from the other end of the line.

Like most weeknights, we were both home, doing our homework, although we spent a lot of those hours on the phone, much to the annoyance of my brother, who was always waiting for the latest girl on duty to call him.

“I just have to finish the statistics homework.”

It had been a couple of months now since that afternoon Bruce had shown up without warning, and since then we’d been getting closer.

The fairy tale had begun.

I missed him like crazy, I wanted to be with him every hour and those we didn’t spend together seemed like an eternity. Would I look like a teenager if I asked him for one of his T-shirts to sleep in?

Bruce was everything I’d always wanted in a guy. Handsome, caring, responsible, generous. Even with his limited resources, he always went out of his way to make me feel special and adored.

“I have to deliver some blueprints commissioned by architect Mercer on Monday,” he sighed wearily and my heart sank at the prospect that the days would pass and we wouldn’t see each other.

Yes, yes, I was an idiot. I was so excited. Every minute was a year, every day torture. An entire weekend seemed like purgatory to me.

Not knowing what to say, I let out a sigh, praying that the calendar would speed up and the holidays would finally arrive.

“Do you want to come and spend the weekend with me?” he asked.

“At your house?” I replied in surprise, and he laughed out loud at my tone.

“Where else? I want to see you, be with you, touch you.”

“You can come here if you want.”

Another laugh echoed on the line.

“Do you want your brother to follow through with his threat?”

God, Warren was a big pain in the ass. More protective than my father, who was more interested in drinking than in my safety, nevertheless he seemed to have trained my brother well. I think that somehow Warren had come up with technology capable of detecting the precise moment that Bruce’s hands slipped under the fabric of my top or the hem of my skirt.

That’s not counting the times he knocked on the door, threatening to knock it down, if he realized that we’d sneaked off for more than a few minutes to the privacy of my room.

Either that, or secretly he was training us for the horny Olympics. Frankly, more than once I was tempted to ask Bruce to take me to a hotel, but knowing him, he would flatly refuse. He was a gentleman, but I was dying for him to lose a little respect for me.

What? I wasn’t going to be the first or the last girl to sleep with her boyfriend in a hotel.

However, the idea of going to his house sounded much more tempting. More special, more intimate.

Perfect.

“But what are we going to do about Warren?” Because if he saw me leave with a suitcase in hand, he was going to have a stroke and lock me up in the highest tower he could find.

Rapunzel would not even compare.

“I’ll take care of your brother.”

“Are you going to get him abducted or something?”

“Don’t worry, Thia,” he chuckled. “Just leave it to me.”

Hmm… well, if he wanted to get into that minefield and risk his own ass, who was I to stop him?

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