I Pucking Love You (The Copper Valley Thrusters #5) - Pippa Grant Page 0,45
over with a new name, which I can do, because I am friends with senior citizen criminals who can help with that sort of thing.”
It’s weird to have a woman in my bed, on the verge of tears, and not have an overwhelming impulse to leap away. “Why did you…” I trail off, because I can’t make myself form the words to ask the question I want to ask.
I couldn’t ask my sisters the same question.
Not that any of them ever would’ve done what she did. I don’t think.
“I got the idea from a book,” she mutters. “And I’d lost a bunch of weight because of stress and I was hot for once, and then my mom found out how much I owed and that I hadn’t found a residency, and she was researching how to sell a kidney, or other things you don’t want to know about, and I think she was serious, especially when she started asking how much kidneys weigh so she’d know how many pounds would come off immediately, so I knew I needed to make some fast cash, and it was what I had, so I decided to see if anyone would bite. Sex is pretty clinical when you get right down to it. Tab A, slot B, right? What’s the big deal if it’s nothing more than going through the motions? Except I couldn’t—I swear, Tyler, if you tell a single soul—”
“It was the guy you bumped into before the viewing, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
“Muffy.”
“I need us both to believe me right now, okay?” she whispers.
I want to hit someone. Or something. Specifically that professor. “Was that his wife with him?”
“Tyler.”
Fuck. Just fuck. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“Thank you.”
“You never told Veda?”
“She knows about the auction but she doesn’t know who showed up or what happened after that. No one does except me and that person. No more talking. I only told you because we were doing the friend thing and confessing things that won’t exist in the morning. Plus, some people at the funeral tomorrow might remember that the auction was a thing and say something, even though I tried to be totally anonymous about who I was through the whole thing, which I don’t think I did very well, and I didn’t want to look like the kind of idiot who doesn’t tell her date about the dumb stuff she did in med school, even if nobody knows what happened the night that…the winner…came to collect his debt. And I’m probably moving to Montana as soon as we get back to Copper Valley.”
My sister Britney got engaged in college to this total dick who always stared at her ass and tits, even when they were visiting us, right in front of my dad and me, but never West, since he was off in the Marines, which explains why the guy’s still alive today. When the jacknugget broke up with her, she spent two weeks crying in her room at home. I remember wanting to punch the guy, but I also remember wanting to punch her.
Why was she broken-hearted over some asshole who didn’t deserve her?
The only thing she’d done wrong was to fall in love with a dick, and for the way he treated her, I couldn’t see why it was worth it.
She told me I’d never understand how women felt about their own self-worth.
She was right.
And now I want to punch Muffy’s parents again. Anyone who whispered behind her back in school. Or ever. That dude she ran into, who better not be the guy who tried to buy her virginity.
Oh, fuck me.
“Muffy?”
She flops around in the small bed, her legs brushing mine, her elbow connecting with my gut and making me oof, until she’s facing away. “We should go to sleep.”
“You weren’t…you know…when we…”
“I said go to sleep, Tyler. Don’t make me get up and smear cookie crumbs in your sheets.”
Dammit.
“Muffy—”
“Shut up.”
Catching up, you idiot? my dick says with a yawn.
She was a virgin.
That night, in the fridge at the bunny bar, she was a virgin.
17
Muffy
I’m in the middle of a dream that I’m drowning in regrets in a hot ocean when I wake up to the realization that Tyler Jaeger is spooning me.
No wonder I’m hot.
He’s like an ocean. An ocean of lava. And he’s surrounding me.
Also, his hand is cupping my breast, and my nipple is very much enjoying the human contact. My other nipple is aching for attention too, but my stomach feels like I ate barbed wire