Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 59713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Ally had brought him back to life, and then she had made herself a part of his life that he couldn’t resist. It was impressive, and I was glad for it.
I took another sip of the beer and realized it was mostly flat. I poured the rest out over the edge of the deck into some bushes and headed in, tossing it in the trash can. Then I grabbed one of the low-calorie ones out of the fridge.
I spent the rest of the night nursing that beer, watching my disgustingly happy brothers enjoy their new lives of domesticity and love. I noted that while Noah had changed a lot from the sullen and angry man he had always been, Kane seemed to be more of himself than he always had been. Rather than softening the edges of my brother, Danica seemed to make them even more illustrative. He was brighter, more colorful, more him-like. It was hard to explain.
As I watched him play with his baby Jonah, proudly showing him off and talking about all the little milestones both he and Noah’s baby Bella were hitting both separately and together, I could see how the family would grow together over the years. As those two settled down, so probably would Cam and Derek in their own time, in their own way. Maybe they would have kids too. Maybe the house would get full of more King children, all from the newest generation. We would be able to have the big family, but this time with all of us being the aunts and uncles we never had growing up and would have certainly benefited from.
It hurt to think our grandparents weren’t around to see it. They would have loved it. But we would make their legacy proud, like we promised to do when they left us the vineyard. The group of us together, taking control of the family’s legacy so we could pass it down to our own children in the future.
Our. I was thinking like them now. As if one day I would have children too.
It hit hard that I was realizing that I did, in fact, want what my brothers had. A family of my own, and an extension of what was in that room. I wanted someone to share my life with, to maybe have children with. To grow old with.
Now what was left was to figure out if it was just time for it or if it was Camilla sparking those thoughts. Because no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t think of another face I wanted to see curled on the couch beside me, blueberry pie in the corner of her lips.
CHAPTER 11
CAMILLA
Despite all my good intentions and plans for a productive week, Monday did not arrive full of sunshine and hope. Instead, I was exhausted and had a headache. Completing all my coursework, making lesson plans for the week at school, and preparing to work a minimum of fourteen hours a day for the next few weeks had me feeling particularly blah and queasy.
When I got out of the shower, I heard my phone chime in the bedroom.
Relief rushed through me when I opened the message and saw that it was from the temp agency telling me the new job didn’t start until Wednesday. Finally, a break. I would be able to come home and go straight to bed tonight.
Nothing starts a Monday off on a pessimistic note quite like having a bag ready and waiting on the passenger seat while driving to work. But, like I said, there was absolutely no way I was going to call out of work.
I made it to work without another incident and walked into the classroom with what I hoped was a convincingly pleasant expression on my face. It didn’t take long for me to realize it was far from convincing. All the students looked back at me and narrowed their eyes, some of them even pulling back slightly.
That wasn’t a good sign.
I didn’t say anything to Mr. Proctor when he came in, but within a few minutes, I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I returned, apologized, and went back to the project we were working on, only to have to leave again within fifteen minutes. That pattern repeated itself throughout the morning, with the stretches of time spent in the bathroom getting longer and the idle periods getting shorter.
When I finally made it back to the classroom after a particularly rapid transition back and forth between the bathroom and the class, Mr. Proctor seemed to have caught on. He gestured at me to join him at his desk in the corner, away from the prying ears of the students.
“Are you doing alright?” he asked. “You seem to be having some trouble this morning.”