Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
“No.” I blow out a cloud of smoke, pulling the cigarette from my mouth. “She was being an idiot.”
“You pushed her?” Pop raises a brow.
“She talked too much.” I follow the footprints that lead down the hall.
Pop doesn’t bother to hide his laugh. “I’ve never been prouder in my life than seeing you with the gavel.”
“Dad?” I ask, stopping outside a door where the footprints stop. Someone has been here, and it doesn’t look like a size—whatever Pop’s is—in Oxford leather.
He follows but doesn’t engage or fuel my suspicions. “Your father taking the gavel made me proud, yes, but it was different.”
“Because he hated you?”
He stands beside me, his brows pinching in when he notices what I’m looking at. “Yes. He hated me for most of his life. It doesn’t matter. I deserved it. When you were born, my own selfishness thought I’d been given another chance.” He shuffles to the side. “No one should have been in here.”
Like an overworked puzzle, I shuffle the pieces around in my head, hoping to see them clearer. “Where do they go to?”
Pop shoves his hands in his pockets. “Everywhere.”
“And what did you find about who is currently running it?”
“No one, son. I found nothing and no one.”
Why did she keep looking at me like I had the answers to all the questions? I didn’t. God, I was so sick of her. I wanted Darling back. Her reckless laugh and the way she’d look at me in challenge. Even at a barely memorable age, the holidays passed slowly, and each time I had to see Luna, it was a reminder of what therapy had forced away.
I hated her. I hated whoever it was who fixed her.
“Priest,” Luna whispered, tucking her hands beneath her pillow. Why was she annoyingly soft? If I yelled, she’d flinch. Or cry. I hated that I thought she was pretty.
“What?” I snapped at her, pulling my focus off her face and staring up at the ceiling. We’d come to Aspen a few times over the years. Our parents thought that if they forced us to all be around each other, we’d like each other. I had no problem with the rest of them.
I just hated her.
I hated the way she made me feel every time she looked at me. I wanted to tear her eyes out of her head and throw them off the cliff.
“I can hear things.”
I almost laugh. Almost. I didn’t because she’s not funny. She’s fucking annoying, and was seconds away from waking Vaden. He needed his sleep, or he’d be hell to deal with tomorrow.
“Can you hear me when I tell you to shut the fuck up and go to sleep?”
The cabin had twelve bedrooms, but oh no. Our parents had to build one large enough to fit bunk beds into every wall.
“But they’re loud,” she whispered again as if trying to make a point. I didn’t have the patience to tell her she’s imagining things or that she was pure fucking madness. What did she mean she could hear things? Hopefully it was Darling coming back to me.
“Can I sleep with you?”
I turned to her, the disgust lifting my lip in a snarl. “Fuck no!”
“Why not!” she snapped, and it was the first time I’d ever heard her give even a hint of attitude.
It caught my tongue a moment. “Because I don’t want to.”
She huffed. “Because you’re afraid?”
“Afraid of what?” I couldn’t believe her! Why the fuck would I be scared of little her. The fragile one that would snap beneath my hand and go crying to mommy and her daddies that the bad kid hurt her. She hadn’t done that, but I’d imagined it vividly enough to feel real.
Her lilac-gray eyes searched mine, the glow from the full moon spreading enough through the window.
“The voices,” she whispered, her words weighed down.
I squeezed my eyes closed. Please go to sleep. Fuck.
“Priest…”
“Ugh!” I tore off the cover, cool air whisking over my skin. “Get the fuck in and shut the fuck up.”
She didn’t hesitate, as if my hostility didn’t bother her. Her tiny legs swung over the side of the bed as she pattered the small distance between both bunk beds and slid beneath the cover. As soon as her little body pressed against mine, I regretted every decision that led me to this point. Her skin was warm—too warm—but that wasn’t what I felt when her small body tucked into mine.
I felt.
That was the most disturbing thing of all.
I fucking felt. Something.
I’d been told all my life that I was emotionless. When my sister grazed her knee, I didn’t care.
When my mother was in a car wreck, I didn’t care.
Pop fought for me by saying that it was because in my subconscious I knew that neither of the incidents warranted me to care, since they were so small, but I wasn’t so sure. I never second-guessed them. I felt numb. I felt nothing. An empty void and a heartbeat that barely wanted to beat.