Read Online The Reason I Stay by Patty Maximini - Free Book Online

inside my brain for the first time tonight. The leather feels cool against the back of my head as I relax into it on a deep breath. I close my eyes.
    There’s a moment of darkness and silence, and then snow is blasting against the windshield. My vision goes in and out of focus as I resist the force pulling my eyelids shut.
    “How was it?” The question is nuzzled against my neck.
    After so many years of friendship, Lea is more than used to my brutal honesty, so I don’t even think before replying. “As good as a hand job can be, but I know you can do better.”
    Her face leaves my neck as she sits straighter in her seat. I steal a peek at her beautiful face, and can’t help but to laugh at the silly blue party hat that is sitting askew on top of her ginger hair. She looks ridiculous and delicious all at once.
    She crosses her arms in front of her vast cleavage. “Of course I can do better, Matty. I’ve been doing your brains out for the past five years. The question is: Do I want to keep doing it?”
    I laugh, and take a sip of the flask between our seats. Without taking my eyes from the white, empty road, I push the button on her seatbelt, releasing her from it. My fingers trace a path from her waist to her tits to her neck until they reach her full lips. I push the tip of my thumb inside her mouth. “You know you do, baby. It’s my birthday, and you’re in love with me.”
    Teeth bite the pad of my thumb, and laughter follows. “You’re such a smug bastard.” Despite her words, she wets her lips and bends her body toward my crotch. I laugh and smack her ass, because I know she likes it.
    I keep driving, she keeps blowing me, and I’m in heaven. She swirls her tongue and runs her teeth from base to tip, and my eyes close for a couple of seconds. When I open them again and look down at my lap, the hair scattered across my legs isn’t red, it’s golden. Lexie.
    The moment bright headlights shine on my face I jolt awake.
    I bring both hands to my cheeks and rub it hard, trying to erase that dream and Lexie from my mind, but it’s hopeless. No matter where I go and what I do, I know I’ll never be able to run from either.
    With a frustrated groan, I turn on the car. Once I reach the entrance to the interstate, with one lane leading back to Jolene and another leading away from it, I consider leaving all of my stuff at the inn and just getting back on road to anyplace else. More than anything, I want to be done with that hell of a town, and the woman who is driving me crazy. I want to be done with all of it.
    I almost do it, but then I remember Kodee. I think about how disappointed she may get if I don’t show up at the beach tomorrow. I think about how selfish that would be of me to just blow off a seven year old who doesn’t have her own house to sleep in every night, and I can’t do it.

 
    “J ust for the record . . . I hate you,” Tanie grumps, fixing her oversized sunglasses on her face. “You can’t get me into a drinking binge and then drag me to the beach, and out in this God awful sun at this unholy hour. That’s considered torture, Lexington.”
    “It’s one thirty in the afternoon, Tanie,” I reply between snickers. “Plus, I didn’t drag you, your sister did.”
    She grunts. “Yes, that little roar. Hate her guts, too.”
    The strange way in which my best friend Tanie speaks never fails to make me laugh. She would have the dirtiest mouth of anyone I’ve ever met if she didn’t find cursing extremely un-lady-like, and thus, replace curse words with similar sounding ones.
    “So, a week and you’re back here?” I ask her once I stop laughing.
    Her previous annoyed frown disappears from her freckled face, giving room for a ginormous smile that makes the heart shape of her face even more prominent. “Yep, one week and I’ll be a graduate. I’ll also be unemployed, but that’s a minor detail.”
    I shake my head. “C’mon Tan, you know for a fact that you’ll have a job. Your dad