Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 33216 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 166(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33216 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 166(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
“I can offer you some water.” All his kitchen electrics were turned off and his fridge was gone. Another item that had been damaged by the kitchen installers. Fucking idiots.
“I’m not here to have a drink.”
“I don’t know any Elizabeth,” Dylan said. “I don’t know what was said to Robin last night, but…”
“Look, I know it’s a hard thing to handle. Trust me, I do know this. I lived here, a few years ago now.” Hector laughed as he rubbed the back of his head. “I purchased this house because it was at the bottom of the street, and I needed to get away. I had … stress, it got bad, really bad, and we’ll leave it at that. I moved in here, and next door, a woman moved in.”
Dylan shook his head. “I think you should go.”
“Hear me out. The woman that moved in next door to me, is now my wife. She is the love of my life, and she is amazing, but here’s the tiny little detail I haven’t mentioned.” Hector paused and he chuckled. “I used to bully her in high school. Can you imagine that? We’re both adults, and we’d drifted apart, found lives, and then in some strange twist of fate, we ended up living next door, and in doing so, I ended up falling in love with her.”
“That’s great.”
“I can see this is a little hard for you to swallow.”
“It’s kind of fucked up,” Dylan said. “There is no hard pill to swallow.”
“Okay, I know it’s going to take some convincing, but hear me out. These are the details we’ve been able to find so far. So, there’s Jaxson, right. You moved into Teal’s mom’s house. Bethany, that was her mother’s name.”
“So, you could have found those details out from Bethany. It’s not a strange thing for two people to find romance and Teal’s name wasn’t on the deeds,” Dylan said.
“True, she was the daughter. I guess it is strange that she went from being this amazing student at a private school and then overnight seemed to get bad grades, life got hard, and they moved here. She then met Jaxson, her teacher, and for some odd reason, he decided to leave his life as a private schoolteacher to move here, and he met Teal.”
Dylan shrugged. “This is all just a coincidence.”
Hector laughed. “Okay, before Jaxson and Teal, then you’ve got me and Verity. Like I said, I was her bully. That is who I was. She hated me, but found it in her heart to love me, and I’ve been one of the happiest men in the world.”
“So?”
“You’re so freaking stubborn. Fine, the couple before us, the details are a little hazy on this one, but there is the assumption that one, if not both of them, belonged to the mafia, and the other was possibly a mafia hitman. I’m not sure if Rix is quite so accurate with that one. I don’t think he is. Then of course, you have Rix and Anna Beth. Elizabeth, the older woman I’ve been standing with, she moved into Rix’s clubhouse, and has been part of that fold for some time. He’s the one that has gotten the last nine or so owners of these two houses. These specific two. According to Elizabeth who has lived here over fifty years, it goes back longer, and trust me, I did my research, and she’s not wrong. These houses, they’re not cursed, they’re a blessing.”
Dylan couldn’t deny that it did seem rather strange. “Were all the people single?”
“Yeah, that’s the strangest thing of all, every person who has come together has been single. Don’t get me wrong, there have been messy breakups and all of that before they came here, but everyone who has lived here has gone on to live a happy life.” Hector shrugged.
“It still could be a coincidence.”
“You’re right, of course it could be. Like Jaxson told me, though, have you ever had something strange happen? Like, say, a builder who I didn’t see, for some reason that doesn’t exist? Jaxon or Teal, I can’t remember which one, received a package for the neighbor, and the recipient who opened it found nothing inside. No return address, it was like the package came out of thin air. There are a lot of these occurrences.”
“Do you mean like a simple kitchen upgrade, that suddenly needed building work, the company goes under, and during that time, you take your neighbor on a three-week anniversary trip that you somehow forgot to cancel, and during that time you realize you’ve fallen in love with her, and not a moment goes by that you don’t think about her?” Dylan asked.
“So, you do realize it?” Hector asked.
“What you’re saying is crazy … but that doesn’t mean that some things have happened that I can’t explain. Take Buttercup, for instance, she always found this place in the garden, that made her able to wriggle through to Robin’s.” Dylan couldn’t believe he was even taking this seriously.