Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 137077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 685(@200wpm)___ 548(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 685(@200wpm)___ 548(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“Okay, that’s… unexpected, but not exactly a problem, right?” Kayla asks, peering at me like she’s trying to piece together what I’ve said with the obvious anger I’m feeling. “How’d that come up?”
I rise, pacing back and forth behind my desk before coming to a stop as I stare out the floor-to-ceiling window. The cloudless blue sky is before me as the bright fall day envelopes the city. People scurry about, rushing to meetings with opened camel hair coats layered over their suits, and there’s the occasional pair of warm Ugg boots paired with a business skirt. My sister would never make that sort of fashion disaster choice, but I don’t think Riley would give a shit. She’d wear a twirly skirt over a pair of jeans, a cardigan with a too-short shirt beneath it, and pair the whole layered mess with combat boots. And those fucking bracelets. Always with those damn things. I swear I can almost hear them now, even though I know she’s not here. Fuck, I almost wish she were.
I glance over my shoulder. Kayla’s perfectly done eyebrows are halfway up her forehead at my obvious avoidance of her question. “She asked. I told her.” It sounds so simple when it’s anything but.
In the days and months after Michelle’s death, I went to therapy. Mom looked up therapists, made an appointment, drove me there, and dog-walked me into the office. She’d deemed it non-negotiable, but of course I resisted. I’d sit on the couch, glare at the therapist, and clamp my mouth shut for the entire hour. Week after week, month after month, she asked question after question and I gave her nothing beyond harsh frowns and narrowed-eyed glares.
That had been Mom’s attempt at forcing me to grieve in a healthy way, and she’d failed spectacularly. Even drunk and depressed and weaker than I’d ever been, I’d fought, sullenly, disrespectfully telling both her and the therapist to fuck off and leave me alone.
So the fact that I told Riley is a big deal and Kayla knows it. More importantly, I know it. I face the window, hiding from my too perceptive sister, but it’s too late when I’ve opened myself up so completely.
“You just told her?” she echoes behind me, sounding more than dubious about that fact. I nod, confirming, and she still presses, “There was no alcohol involved, or torture devices, or bribery?” Barely turning my head to glance over my shoulder, I arch a brow, and she sits back in her chair, slumping like I’ve taken the wind out of her. “Wow, okay. That’s a good thing? That you’re talking… finally.” There’s a fair amount of judgment in her assertion. Like ‘finally’ should’ve come a long time ago, but grief doesn’t follow a scheduled timeline. Mine or Kayla’s or anyone else’s. It moves in fits and starts, then stalls and reverses, and apparently, makes inconvenient, staggering leaps forward when I least expect it.
“No, it’s not,” I grit out, reasserting, “it’s a problem.”
“Because you prefer bottling up everything you feel and stuffing it all down until you’re a cold, robotic asshole? Sounds like an example you should be proud of setting,” she suggests, pulling no punches. Not that I’m surprised. Kayla’s not known for being gentle, but rather for being skilled at cutting people off at the kneecaps in ten words or less.
“Riley’s an employee,” I remind her. “She’s there for Grace, not for me.” I have to say it again, not for Kayla’s benefit, but for my own. “She’s not for me.”
Kayla knows me too well—better than any of my other siblings, though I suspect they would all say the same thing about her—so when I hear my sister’s intake of breath, I take a cue from Riley and glance at Kayla’s reflection in the window. I find her smirking like she just figured out something important. I’ve seen that expression on her face at negotiation tables when her opponent has overplayed their hand, and I harden my defenses for whatever she’s about to come back with because it’s going to hurt.
Knowing I’m looking at her, she holds up two fingers and counts, “One, two problems.”
“Never mind.” Dismissing her, I move my eyes back to the city beyond the window, staring unseeingly.
I hear Kayla get up and come to my side. Leaning into my shoulder, she settles in to wait me out, but like her brilliance is bubbling up so quickly that she can’t contain it, she states bluntly, “You like her.” I glance down at her, the sharp disagreement on the tip of my tongue, but her eyes are fixed on the horizon the way mine were and I realize that it wasn’t a question, but rather a declaration. “You think problem one is that you talked to her, and problem two is that you like her. You’re wrong. It’s one issue—you talked to her because you like her. And that doesn’t have to be a problem, Cam.”