Page 25 of Unearthed Dreams

“Hmm, you were just telling me I don’t know much about you,” Charlie said, taking a small sip of her Coke through the straw. She had no idea what those lips of hers did to a man. “How about we change that?”

I grunted, but she took it as my agreement. Funny thing was, she could’ve asked me pretty much anything and I’d agree.

“Where are you from?”

“Grand Rapids.”

“No way!” She beamed, and it lit up the whole damn bar. “That’s where I’ve been the last four years. Maybe we bumped into each once and never even knew.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Why?”

“Wouldn’t say we ran in the same crowds.”

“Okay, but did you go to the grocery store?”

“Yes.”

“Starbucks?”

“Reluctantly.”

“The movies.”

“Never.”

“Never?!”

“Nope.”

“That’s just not right.”

“Taking ten kids to the movies wasn’t in the foster family’s budget.”

“And after?”

“Our extracurriculars were a little less wholesome.”

“Ah, I see.”

“I don’t think you do, Charlie. I’m not a good man.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m not a good man,” she mimicked in a comically deep voice. “You sound like such a cliché right now. I will be the judge of that, thank you.”

This girl.She came across all meek and shy, but I had a feeling she was anything but. Had she gotten swallowed up in the chaos of her family? Overshadowed by her old siblings? Did nobody see the spirit in her? The fire? Did nobody nurture it?

I could.

But I wouldn’t.

It was a conclusion I’d come to over the past few days. I could be her friend. I could read her novel, give her feedback, and talk books with someone for the first time in years.

But that was all it would be, no matter where my fantasies took me. No matter how those erotic words she’d written in her book affected me.

Charlie may have wanted to be the one to judge my character for herself, but I’d looked in the mirror enough times to know one thing for certain: I was no good for Charlotte Everton.

Chapter Nine