Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 60309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
I smile harder and sway in his arms. “I’m sure they’d take one look at me and fly away on their spaceship anyway.”
He scoffs. “Never. They’d take one look at you and want you for eternity.” He bends down like he’s going to kiss me but then our kids make loud coughing noises.
Xander and Kinney usually don’t care when we kiss. Actually, none of my kids make a big deal about it. They’re usually used to it. Is it because they’re both in high school and can’t stand the sight of their parents having PDA?
It makes me wonder, is it because I’m old now?
Do I look old?
I don’t feel old.
But kissing Lo is suddenly uncool? My face heats at the thought.
Lo abandons the kiss to glance up and tilt his head. “Do you hear something, Lil?”
“Sounds like our kids,” I whisper.
“Unless our kids have tuberculosis, I’m not sure if these are ours.” He squints harder at them. “No, definitely not ours.”
They both stop fake coughing, and Kinney says, “We have something to tell you both. And we know how you two get when you’re together.”
“Obsessed,” Xander says.
Okaaay. I frown harder. “So you’re not embarrassed we’re kissing in front of you?” I wonder.
“What?” Xander’s face cinches like he doesn’t understand how I came to that conclusion.
Kinney adds, “If it embarrassed us, we’d be living in constant embarrassment. No thank you.” She mock brushes it off like it’s dust on her shoulder.
Xander says, “Yeah, I mean you two love each other. Why would that be embarrassing?”
My heart fills up way too much.
“And look at that,” Lo smiles. “These are our kids.”
“I claim them,” I say into a confident nod, then I look to Kinney. “What do you have to tell us?”
Lo reaches around my waist to grab a cookie from the plate. “What your Mom is asking is what could possibly be so important that you stop a hello kiss?”
Xander and Kinney share a look.
“Just ask, Kin,” Xander encourages.
Kinney takes a deep breath. “I got asked to Winter Formal by a senior girl who is gorgeous and amazing and she’s graduating next year—”
“No,” Lo says, dropping his arms off me and tossing his half-eaten cookie in the plate.
“Dad—”
“I said no, Kinney,” Lo declares. “You just turned fifteen. This senior girl is what eighteen?”
“Seventeen,” Xander says. “She’s seventeen.”
“Going to be eighteen then,” Lo says. “She’s graduating and you’re a freshman. No.”
I take Lo’s half-eaten cookie. “You two might not even be allowed to go to this Winter Formal thing,” I tell them. “We’re still deciding on a punishment for the party.”
Lo nods in agreement. “Exactly.”
Xander shrugs. “I wasn’t going to go to it anyway.”
Kinney gives him a look. “Not helping.”
He frowns. “You’ve barely talked to this girl, Kin. She just asked you to the Formal to say she went out with the Kinney Hale.”
Kinney’s face goes red. “You don’t know that.”
“I know a lot about being used. It happens.”
That statement unsettles my stomach, but their teenage experiences aren’t totally the same as mine or Lo’s since they’ve grown up famous.
Kinney thinks this over, her face looking more and more pained.
Lo glances between our kids like he’s watching a car crash. “All right,” he says quickly. “How about you two get ready for bed and let me and your mom talk?”
“You mean kiss?” Kinney corrects, already headed for the door.
“That too,” I say into a nod.
Xander tosses his empty can of Sprite in the trash, and I watch them both leave the kitchen. Lo runs a couple hands through his hair when he turns back to me. I’ve been waiting for an update on The Royal Leaks, but tonight has been so long and nuts that I just really want the Cliff Notes.
“Just give me the basics,” I tell him.
“We know who’s behind the Royal Leaks.”
I thought I’d feel relieved by this news, but I sense more dread than relief.
PART SIX
DECEMBER 2040
SIXTEEN
HAY FEVER FROM THE ATTIC
DECEMBER 2040
DURING CHAPTER 20 IN NOBODY LIKE US
We listened to "Weight in Gold" by Gallant while writing this scene.
Character List:
Maximoff Hale - 25
Bodyguards:
Farrow Hale - 30 Omega (Current Client: Maximoff Hale)
MAXIMOFF HALE
DEAR WORLD, don’t let dust mites take me out. Sincerely, a humbled human.
Shirtless, everyone has vacated the attic like my husband yelled “fire” in a crowded room. All he really did was say everyone out. And maybe it’s the intensity in his brown eyes or the way he’s wiping down my arms with a wet wipe that cleared this disaster zone.
“I’m okay. I’m fine,” I tell Farrow for literally the hundredth time. Okay, not literally. But in the sixty seconds he’s been up here, it’s felt like a hundred times.
By the way, he’s looking at me like I’m anything but fine.
I cough into my fist, an itch in my throat.
His eyes narrow.
I rasp out, “I’m fi—”
“I heard you,” he says, sweeping me head to toe again. “You need a shower and Benadryl.”