Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Among other things. Now, are you going to take me to see my mother, or what?”
“You haven’t seen her yet?”
“Haven’t been inside. I wanted to bury that box first.”
I take a deep breath, steadying myself. His dark green eyes stare at me intensely, and I hate the way he looks down my body, judging me. I’m in pretty good shape from working outside all the time, but I’m wearing old denim shorts, a beat-up button-down shirt and a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun from my face, and it’s not particularly flattering. I don’t know what he’s thinking right now, and I’m not sure I want to find out.
He and I don’t exactly have a normal history.
No, the first word I think of when it comes to Kellen is complicated.
The second word is asshole.
“You should clean up first. You can shower then maybe—”
“No,” he says, grabbing a black t-shirt from where he had it hung over the branch of a bush. “We’ll go now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Lead the way, Tara.” He yanks the shirt over his head and walks out of the copse of trees, through the bushes, and back onto the path. He leaves the shovel behind, presumably for me to gather up later.
The fucking asshole.
I tear myself from the spot and step out beside him. Kellen lingers close, looking down at me with a tilted head and a half-smile. God, that smile is so familiar, I used to look forward to seeing it whenever I spent time with Cait in this place. Kellen is five years older, but he was close with Cait and made a point to visit the manor as often as he could when he was off at college.
All that changed though. A lot changed after Cait died. An old, twisting guilty feeling spreads through my hands and down into my feet, and sweat rolls down my back, both from the heat and from the memory of my best friend. I glance up at the house, at the sprawling complex of wings and sitting rooms and bedrooms and corridors, and I wonder how I’m still here, like a ghost haunting the place where my life ended seven years earlier.
Kellen stands there, eyebrows raised, that cocky smile beamed directly at me, and I finally sigh and motion for him to follow.
“Right this way, Mr. Hayle.”
“Oh, I like it when you call me that. Maybe add sir next time.”
“Asshole.”
He laughs and we head to the house.
Chapter 2
Kellen
I step into the foyer of my old home and look around at the too-familiar walls, at the paintings and the crystal chandelier hanging above the twisting staircase, at the small Greek statues on their marble pedestals, and wonder how the hell I ever put up with living in this stuffy shithole of a place in my life.
At least it’s nice and cool inside. I wipe my forehead again and take a step forward. There’s dirt on my shoes and I smile to myself. If I ever came inside as a kid with dirty shoes and tracked mud on the floors, my father would’ve given me new scars on my back to join all the old ones he left etched into my flesh over the years. Now the old bastard’s dead.
“She’s in her room,” Tara says quietly, heading to the stairs. “She doesn’t come out much these days. I haven’t seen her outside in…” She trails off and looks over her shoulder.
I hesitate at the bottom of the stairs. Tara’s halfway up and frowning at me. She took her hat off, and her dark hair is down between her shoulder blades, black and thick and shiny. Her full lips are tugged into a frown, and her intense brown eyes stare at me uncertainly, probably wondering why I’m drinking her body in like a feast. Her skin’s sun darkened, tanned from working outdoors, and her body is beautiful and lean from the manual labor. I remember Tara was sexy as hell when we were younger, but she was my little sister’s forbidden best friend and still a teenager back then.
Now she’s a woman. Twenty-five, if I’m doing my math right. Suddenly, she doesn’t seem so off-limits anymore.
“Something wrong?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Just thinking about how I had a crush on you when we were younger.”
She laughs uncomfortably. “We met when I was fourteen.”
“And I wasn’t interested in you at first. But you grew up, didn’t you?”
“You’re full of shit.”
“I’m not. You were too young and Cait would’ve killed me, obviously—” I hesitate, not happy with my choice of words, but I push on anyway. “But you were always around.”
“We were best friends.”
“Yeah, I know that. Best friends that shared everything, right?” We reach the top of the stairs and she moves to hurry down the hall, but I grab her wrist and pull her back. She sucks in a surprised breath as my fingers dig into her skin and I hold her tightly, feeling the small bones in her wrist, delicate and soft. I could snap them if I wanted. Just a little more pressure and she’ll scream in agony, and there’s a part of me that wants to do it, that craves to see her in pain right now.