Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
We entered the kitchen, and she let go of my arm and went for the pantry. She opened the door to reveal a full wine rack just inside.
“See?” Her smile was smug as she grabbed two bottles and two wine glasses. “Eric, I assume you’re not joining?”
He took position outside the doorway that linked the kitchen to the sitting room and moved so he could stare out one of the larger windows.
She snorted, shutting the pantry door and going to the table. Plopping down with a dramatic sound, she leaned back in her seat. “You have no idea how exhausted I am. This whole ordeal has been tiring.”
She was telling me that?
But I sat. I was slipping into my old role without even trying. I only smiled at her.
She twisted the cap off the wine and poured two generous glasses. Pushing one toward me, she took hers and sipped. “Oh my gosh. That’s so good. They always has the best stuff here.” Her eyes narrowed, seeing I hadn’t taken mine. “Do you not drink? I know we snuck wine in the dorms, but maybe you’ve changed.” She perused me a moment. “You did look kinda hippyish when I saw your house.”
“I’m not hippyish. That’s my roommate.” But she wasn’t altogether wrong.
Being outdoors was my happy place. Raven had some hippy tendencies, and Raven and Riley had some similarities.
I straightened up.
I didn’t want her telling me who I was. That was for her to learn from me. It wasn’t her place.
“You’re being judgmental, sister,” Kai drawled, entering the kitchen.
My mouth dried at the sight of him.
He’d changed into a gray Henley and black pants. He was devastating in a business suit, lethal in athletic clothes, but with this shirt, he looked like power. Pure and simple—though there was nothing pure about his power nor simple about him.
Nevertheless, I felt a rush of relief, as if he were an ally coming to my defense. As if Brooke were my enemy.
I looked down at my lap, not wanting to see the way Brooke greeted her brother.
I didn’t want to see her hostility, because I didn’t think I could be hostile with a brother who loved me that much. Or maybe I’d see a fond resignation toward him, because while she didn’t agree with his actions, he had moved heaven and earth to find her.
That meant something.
“I’m not being judgmental,” she said.
Her reaction was neither. They’d just fallen back in place as if they were home, as if nothing had happened, as if they were arguing whether to play Monopoly or Bunko.
“You should take that back, brother.” She mocked him. “I was just saying what I saw.”
“You saw wrong.” Kai took the seat beside me, reaching for the bottle and pouring a little into a glass he’d brought with him. “I saw the inside of her house. I agree with Riley. Her room was simple, straight to the point—a bed, a counter, a desk, a closet. That’s it. Nothing extra. It’s a room used for sleeping. That doesn’t say hippy to me at all.”
I looked at him. “When did you see my house?” My room?!
But Brooke wasn’t having it. She propped her elbow on the table and pointed. “Okay. One, when did you see her house? Two, you were in her room?! Three, you’re acting like there’s something wrong with being a hippy. I have quite a few friends who are hippies. They’re hilarious to party with.”
Kai had kept a stone face before, but a grin cracked through now. He lifted his wine glass. “I never was. I was just guessing.”
“Agh! You suck.”
But he wasn’t guessing. I saw it in his eyes.
He had been in my house, my room because he’d been right. I didn’t have keepsakes or pictures or even a Chapstick out on my dresser. Nothing except my laptop. It sat center on my desk.
Brooke slapped a hand on the table, leaning forward, still gripping her wine glass. “Are you going to tell me what you did with Levi? I know you took him. Where is he? He’s not with this caravan.” She waved her glass around the room, indicating all the guards.
I could see three standing outside the window, two farther back in the woods, and another one right next to the house.
Kai just sipped his wine, eyeing his sister.
She made another frustrated sound, pretending to wring his neck in the air. “You drive me crazy sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” he teased.
She succumbed, her face melting to a smile. “Yes. Annoying. You. You keep things from me, thinking it’s in my best interest. But you can’t make all my decisions for me. You’re only four years older than I am, Kai.”
“Four or forty. Same difference,” he shot back.
“You’re such a dick.” But she was smiling, and she didn’t mean it.
She loved him, as much as he loved her.