Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68959 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68959 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
I winced.
I hadn’t forgotten about Colt. I knew exactly where Colt was, and he was already where I needed him.
“Colt’s at the old shed out on the corner of my land,” I paused. “Keeping an eye on the property there.”
“Why?” Jensen asked as he stepped back long enough for Callum and Banks to take him into a hug at the same time.
I grinned at seeing Jensen smile.
It had been a while.
Two years, to be exact.
Colt, Jensen, and I had all been in the military together. But when I’d gotten out due to the fact that my little brother was a prick, Jensen had stayed in with Colt. Colt got out a year later, and then Jensen had stayed in, being deployed for fourteen months. When he got back, he was immediately stationed in Kuwait, and I hadn’t seen him since.
“Because I have a bead on some land there,” I answered. “I’m sweet-talking the old lady that owns it.”
“The land that Old Mother Hubbard owns?” Banks teased.
I snorted. “Yes, her. And… the land that used to be ours.”
There was silence for a long couple of loaded breaths, and then Banks blew out a breath as he said, “We can afford that?”
I swallowed hard. “If we all band together? Yes.”
“How?” he asked.
I lifted the cowboy hat up off my head and then ran my fingers through my sweat-soaked hair.
“Do you want the honest answer or the one that’s going to hurt less?” I asked carefully.
“The truth,” Banks and Callum said instantly.
I drew in a deep breath and expelled it.
“Mom had life insurance out on her, Dad, and all of us,” I said. “At the time of the incident, none of us were in any shape to understand or comprehend anything about money or insurance policies. But, I came across some paperwork in Dad’s old desk a few weeks ago, and got to looking.” I swallowed hard. “I have the paperwork at the lawyer’s office right now, but if what I’m reading is correct? We could all have about eighty-thousand dollars coming to us… a piece.”
Everyone sat there in loaded silence for a few minutes, then Callum blew out a breath. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s enough to buy the two-thousand acres. It’s also enough to get this place running… and all of us to build if that’s what we want.”
“So that’s why you wanted us to wait on building an addition.” Callum shook his head. “When will we know for sure?”
I looked at my watch and checked the time and date.
“By tomorrow at five o’clock,” I answered. “I called, and they said that it’d take twenty-four hours to contact the benefits department on our behalf asking for the payout. Once they receive the letter, they have two business days to respond… and that happened two days ago.”
We sat there in silence for a long while.
“I feel like it’s dirty money,” I found myself saying. “So that’s why I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, or if I did get the money, whether spending it was the right thing to do.”
“Doesn’t Dad killing himself negate the policy?” Banks asked.
I shook my head. “No. I had the lawyers go over it with a fine-toothed comb. There were no stipulations on how he had to die. Just that he die. Which he did. Quite spectacularly.”
Callum snorted.
“I still fucking hate him,” Banks said. “If he was alive, I’d kill him all over again just to watch him die.”
My sentiments exactly.
“I wasn’t going to do anything about this just yet. Just sit on it and wait until I knew more,” I said softly. “But now that y’all know, I might as well tell the others when they call next. That we might need to figure out living situations until we know for sure.”
Banks grunted. “Remy will know by the end of the day because he’ll text me at some point and I’ll have to tell him or he’s going to use his best friend powers and figure out that something is being kept from him.”
“Did you tell Darby yet?” Callum asked.
“No,” I admitted. “I just flat out told you that I wasn’t going to tell any of y’all.”
“Well, no need on waiting to tell me, seeing as you already told me.” Darby came up and launched himself at Jensen’s back.
Jensen staggered with his newly added weight and automatically turned and flipped Darby over his shoulder. Instead of Darby hitting the ground, though, he hit the grass landing on his feet and started laughing, obviously having anticipated Jensen’s move.
“Sorry,” Darby laughed at Jensen’s scowl. “Old habits die hard.”
Jensen smiled then.
Since Darby was the baby of us all, it was sometimes hard to reprimand him when he knew better.
Darby had somehow become the ‘baby brother’ of the whole unit when he’d been going through his rough teenage years. Colt and Jensen treated him like a brother. Which was why Darby never got in trouble for scaring the shit out of all of us, because when he did, it meant that he wasn’t hanging around in his head instead of interacting with the real world.