Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
“Promise?”
“Yes.” Why it wobbled, I didn’t know, but making an oath to this little child felt monumental. Like I was pledging something I didn’t have the right to pledge.
Claiming something that wasn’t mine.
I didn’t even know if Logan would want me there. This was already hard enough.
Perilous.
My stomach clutched.
I’d die before I’d put these babies in danger. This family.
I had to believe Jarek wouldn’t be so foolish to go against my father’s direct orders, though. He had to stand down. Give me this time. It was the only reason I felt comfortable staying here while I figured out what I was going to do.
Eden’s smile shifted, as if she held the power to read every reservation that’d flash-fired through my mind. “Us Lawsons, we stick together. Through the good times and the really, really terrible times. And believe me, we’ve had some really terrible times.”
She reached out and touched my hand like in doing so, she was tying me to them.
A connection.
Binding me to the promise that those who loved you fought for you.
A reassurance that I didn’t need to be afraid.
“God knows them boys find themselves in plenty of trouble,” Gretchen tsked.
Juni grabbed my other hand. “You got to come because we’re gonna finds out if I get a baby brother or baby sister. My mimi said it’s a double trouble party. Do you know my mimi? She’s the best Mimi in the whole worlds.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll introduce you. You don’t got to be shy.” Juni nodded emphatically.
“Well…now that we’ve properly scared the poor girl away.” Eden lifted her brow in apology.
“Nonsense. This one’s tough as grit.” Gretchen gestured toward me with the infant in her arms.
“Hardly.” I feigned a giant smile.
“I’m pretty sure you’re tougher than you think.” Gretchen eyed me differently that time. Intuitively. As if she knew more than she should. “Hard in all the right places…soft where it counts.”
Unease lifted in a show of red, and then Eden cleared her throat. “We’d better get to this or we won’t have it ready before Logan gets back. Trent is making sure he’s occupied until five.”
She started taking bags from the stroller and piling them onto the island. They were full of craft and party materials.
“I get to do the balloons!” Juni shouted as she scrambled onto a stool so she could reach.
Gage hauled me that direction. “Do you want to help me make the invitation? It is going to be the coolest in ever and ever! Right, Mommy, right?”
He looked to the woman who gazed at him in absolute adoration. So thick I felt as if we were wading through it.
“That’s right, my sweet boy.”
“Let’s do it!” He fist pumped the air.
Eden put out the materials.
Balloons and streamers and a giant poster board.
And we set to work.
To work on this special treasure. A mark in time. Logan Lawson’s birthday.
The memory something I’d cherished, held like a dream and stored like a shrine.
The man my holy place.
My whisper of hope.
That space that was now a void that ached to be filled.
TWENTY
LOGAN
“What the fuck is up with you, man?” With my hands stuffed in my pockets, I leaned back against the wall of the elevator and eyed Trent.
Dude stood there wearing black jeans and a worn black leather jacket and unlaced motorcycle boots, trying to hold back a Cheshire smirk from his mouth.
It wasn’t working.
He laughed under his breath and stared at the elevator floor.
A grin taking hold, I shook my head. “You lightweight motherfucker. Are you drunk? Tell me you haven’t gone weak on me.”
He’d shown up at my office two hours ago and insisted we head out to grab a birthday beer or two.
I hadn’t complained much except for the fact I’d been dying to get back to my apartment.
I just wanted to look at her.
See her face.
Be in her space.
Pathetic, much?
Felt like we’d been orbiting each other for the last five days since the night something had changed.
The change had been in me, I imagined.
Like the wounds she’d inflicted no longer fucking mattered. The only thing that did was her.
Still, I’d held back, waiting on her because I was certain the girl hadn’t yet caught up to me.
She wasn’t getting it.
What made things worse was Dean had come back with squat. The only thing he’d found were a few indiscretions that weren’t anything we could take back to Aster’s father, considering most of them had been done in the Costa name.
Chuckling low, Trent scrubbed a palm over his face and cut me a glance. “Not even close, bro. Who do you think I am?”
“Then what the hell is so funny?”
“Nothin’.”
Nothing.
Right.
He laughed again.
“Why are you acting like a giggling schoolgirl with her first crush?”
He shrugged a shoulder with a damned red face.
What the hell?
The elevator dinged open at my floor, and I went striding toward my apartment, trying to hide how anxious I was to get inside. I swung open the door.