Fake Love - Jaxson Kidman Page 0,15

fingertips, he touched my hand and lifted it up.

Then he took my hand.

“Well, as strange as this is… let me introduce myself to you. I’m Noah. I don’t think you really need to know my last name or about my life. But I just wanted to see you. Check up on you. Okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for that. I wish I could say or do more…”

Does he believe me? Is this working?

Noah stared for a few more seconds.

Then he brought my hand to his mouth.

He kissed the back of my hand and smiled.

Chills moved up and down my back.

At the same time, a different set of chills moved inside my stomach and down…

I pulled my hand away.

“Do you live around here?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I just wanted to see you. Stay safe, Winter.”

Noah walked backward a few steps and then turned around.

My teeth started to chatter.

I wasn’t sure if I could actually do this.

“Here’s the way I see it, Winter,” my mother said as she tossed a piece of pizza crust into the box. “Skip the crust, less carbs. Even still… you can run your ass off and kill the calories. Or just let some of those curves grow in, you know? Guys are fucking idiots. They’ll look at pictures of these women who are too skinny for their own good, claiming it gets them hard. It doesn’t. You know what they secretly love? Curves. Something to touch. Hold onto. Cuddle up to. They’re all fucking assholes. My point? Eat the pizza and fucking smile.”

I lifted my slice of pizza and grinned ear to ear. “How’s that?”

“Not bad,” she said. “You have your father’s teeth though. Sorry about that.”

I closed my mouth.

My teeth? What’s wrong with my teeth?

My face turned red and I watched my mother walk into the kitchen.

She was wearing shorts way too short. And it wasn’t curves hanging out of the back of those shorts either. It looked like the wrinkled ass of an elephant.

So take that.

I finished eating and my mother poured herself a large glass of wine.

“Care to join me?” she offered.

I shook my head.

“Really? You don’t drink?”

“I don’t like wine,” I said.

“Oh, well, excuse me. You’re Miss Top Shelf, huh?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Did you think about everything yet?”

“Getting there.”

“I know you’ll do the right thing,” she said.

“Hey… have you ever done something like this?”

My mother smiled. “You mean, have I ever poured gasoline into a two hundred thousand dollar convertible and lit it on fire, only to stand there with a cigarette between my lips, waiting. When I was caught, I then asked the asshole who cheated on me if he had a light for my cigarette? Maybe…”

“You smoke?” I asked.

“No,” my mother said. “The cigarette was for effect. That’s the part of the story you went with though?”

“Well, the rest is true,” I said. “You’re crazy.”

“And you came from me,” she said.

I felt uneasy.

I wasn’t sure if crazy was passed through genes, but if so, then I was crazy too.

When my mother was out of sight, I went into the kitchen and found the cabinet where she kept the bottles of booze.

I plucked a bottle of vodka and walked to the back door.

I had a lot to think about.

And a little drink or two wasn’t going to kill anyone.

I laughed at that joke as I went outside.

The joke became suddenly real when I saw the glow of a cigarette.

Someone was sitting on the top step of the deck.

It was Easton.

Chapter 6

two to go

six

two to go

I quickly took the cap off the vodka bottle and took a drink.

It burned. Which was good. The burning took away the reality that fucking Easton was sitting on the top step of the deck of my mother’s house.

Again, I reminded myself of what I had to do.

Fake it. Fake everything. Fake. Fake. Fake.

“You scared me,” I said.

Easton sat with his back against one pillar and his feet touching the other.

He was in black boots, jeans, and a black t-shirt.

He looked at me and took a drag from his cigarette.

I listened to him exhale the deadly smoke.

Then again, the smoke was less deadly than Easton himself.

“Winter,” he said.

His voice was deep and a little scratchy from the cigarette.

If I remembered correctly - which I did - Easton had messy black hair and eyes that were a light brown. His eyes almost looked a little bit innocent. He contradicted himself though, because of his look. He wore stubble like he didn’t give a shit about his appearance, but everyone