Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 67432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“Nope, just the lawyer.”
“Will the lawyer be at the villa?” Eric asked.
My eyes jumped to him. He sat across from me on the love seat with a fluffy red blanket thrown over his lap. The overhead lighting in Tia’s living room wasn’t really doing anyone any favors, but Eric still looked damn good, the alcohol coursing through my veins making me take even more notice of his good looks than usual.
“She will be,” I said, trying to peel my eyes off Eric but finding it difficult to break the spell, even when Yvette asked me a question.
“Huh? Sorry, my head’s all over the place,” I asked her, managing to break eye contact with Eric before he melted me into the bench I was sitting on.
“Oh, I totally get it. I was just saying that maybe the answer isn’t money. Maybe it’s love? Or, well, the opposite of love. Was your mom involved with anyone?”
That was a good point and one I unfortunately didn’t have much information about. “My mom was really hush-hush with whoever she was dating. She still got along with my dad, but they split up when I was in the fourth grade.”
“Was it amicable?” Eric asked. I could tell he was slipping on his detective hat. He leaned forward, his amber-brown eyes taking on a certain intensity to them that made me glued to the bench.
“It was, from what I can remember. Of course, me and my siblings got the sugarcoated version of things. So I guess you’d have to ask him for the full story.” I licked my lips, my mouth feeling dry all of a sudden. It wasn’t like we were gathered around talking about silly hookup stories or twisty book chapters. We were discussing the murder of my mother with a group of people that had just met me and yet still welcomed me with wide-open arms. It made my chest tighten with emotion.
Growing up, I was always a little bit of a loner. I had a hard time making friends at school. I was shy and reserved and quickly became a target for the bullies once puberty came around and my voice was cracking as much as my wrists were. At some point in high school, one of those ritzy private schools where the kids sometimes had more money than the professors themselves, I ended up accepting it and just came out, taking away some of the sting from the bullies’ slurs by saying, “Yeah and?” So what if you yell about me sucking dick as we’re switching classes. I shrugged and kept walking, which really pissed off some of the more aggressive bullies. One of them—James St. James, a bully name if I’d ever heard one—yanked me by my book bag and started to fight me with how pissed off he got. Thankfully, there was a teacher nearby that intervened before it got serious, which it easily could have judging by the bloodlust in the guy’s eyes.
That’s when I got into the gym. I knew I had to be able to protect myself. So I got a personal trainer and went balls to the wall, working out two times a day and keeping track of everything I ate. Turned out I loved it. There was a meditative aspect to working out for me, so I capitalized on that. I used my time at the gym to work through my shit, solve whatever problems I had on my plate at the time.
But still, I was always missing something, and now I realized what that was: a close friend group. One that felt like family. I thought I’d find some of that when I joined the police academy, being encouraged to join by my grandfather, who was a cop all his life. It took a little convincing, but it was during a point in my life when I’d never felt more lost. I wanted to help people, and I wanted to have a job that didn’t keep me locked up in an office. The last thing I wanted to do was ride off my mother’s coattails, and so I felt like it was one of my only options for having a solid and self-sustaining future.
But instead of brotherly camaraderie, I was confronted with the same brutish personalities that had bullied me when I was younger. The only person I got along with before I dropped out was Eric, and the reasons for that were obvious to me… maybe not so much to him.
“I’ll see if I have a chat with your dad,” Eric said, pulling me back to the present, even though he’d been right there with me in the past.
“I can’t believe you guys are going to be in the South of France in a couple of days,” Noah said. He was wearing a black pair of Ray-Bans that he adjusted to sit higher up on his nose.