Page 2 of A Million Times, Yes
“Some rich corporation bought the complex and is knocking it down to build luxury condos. Luxury condos in South Boston, can you even believe that?” She raised her arm, and some of the liquid sloshed out from the bottle, hitting the floor with asplat. “This is how the rich keep getting richer. They take away from the people who really need it.” She shook my cheek. “Like us.”
Our home? Is going to be taken away from us?
It wasn’t perfect. The heat didn’t work all that well in the winter, and the microwave had been broken for months. I had to run home from school because Mom said it wasn’t safe to walk, and I couldn’t go out after dark unless I was with her, and even then she didn’t like to.
But the apartment was ours.
And losing it wasn’t fair.
It was ... like some cruel, sick joke.
“Don’t they care that we lived in our car for a whole month before we found this apartment?”
“Two months, baby.” She guzzled from the bottle and wiped her lips. “Two months and three days, and if I hadn’t sold the car to afford the security deposit for this apartment, we’d be moving back into it.”
My stomach growled for the fruit cup that was in the fridge. I’d seen it this morning before I’d left for school, saving it for a snack when I got home. There was only one left. But if Mom didn’t have a job anymore, I worried that snack would turn into my dinner.
“It’s going to be okay, Mom. We’ll find another place to live, and I bet you get the first job you apply to and—”
“I wish it was that easy, honey.” She leaned in to my face. What I saw instead of tears was something that worried me, something I hadn’t seen since we’d moved out of the car and into this apartment: fear. “But for people like us, it just isn’t.”
Chapter One
Jordan
My eyes opened several minutes before my alarm went off, the quietness of Boston outside the windows and the darkness of the early-morning sky reiterating today’s only goal: to dominate this fucking city.
As chief marketing officer of Worthington Enterprises, that was my job.
As a thirty-three-year-old bachelor who had been chasing pussy since high school like I’d once skated after the puck, dominating Boston both sexually and financially was my agenda.
Something I couldn’t accomplish if I kept lying in this bed.
I went into my en suite, where I took off my glasses to splash water on my face, brushed my teeth, and put in my contacts before heading for my walk-in closet. I was a man of routine. Of strict discipline. I believed in challenging my mind and pushing my body to its limits, so I started almost every day with a run.
I dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, pulled up my socks and tied my laces, and stretched my arms as I went into the kitchen.
An entire cabinet was dedicated to vitamins and supplements. I picked the usual suspects and collected the pills in my palm, washing them down with electrolytes. I’d begun skating when I was only six, then went straight into youth hockey until high school, where I playedvarsity all four years, followed by a full scholarship to Boston College, getting drafted my senior year, and spending the next nine years in the NHL. I needed all the support I could get to keep this body in the best shape possible, and this cocktail I’d washed down certainly helped.
Five miles was the regimen.
When my body wanted to quit after four and my mind started to scream that I needed to be at work, I’d keep going.
The best part of that entire five-mile distance?
Her.
For the last two weeks, like clockwork she appeared around the half-mile mark. She would turn off the cross street and meet me at the intersection. I’d stay behind her for the next four and a half miles until I neared my building, and we’d part ways.
I didn’t lag because her pace was faster than mine. Shit, that wasn’t the case at all. I positioned myself that way so I could stare at her perfect ass for the majority of my run.
The first couple of times I saw her, we connected eyes. That was all she gave me before she moved ahead and stayed there until I veered off. By the third meetup, I earned myself a smile.
It was gorgeous.
Which only made sense, because she was breathtaking.
Brown oval-shaped eyes and coffee-colored hair that she wore in a high ponytail, a small button-like nose and thick lips. A set of tits that weren’t any bigger than a B, the bounce in them telling me they were real. She had a flat stomach and just the right amount of curve, which ended in deliciously muscular legs.
