Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 100277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
To his credit, Rafe calmly listened and didn’t react.
He did react, however, every time Arlo snapped impatiently at me. I could see Rafe’s expression growing darker as the day wore on, and I shook my head at him in a silent request to let it go.
He did.
Until I’d reached out to take Arlo’s dinner tray and he curled his hand around my wrist and shoved me away with enough force that I had to correct my balance.
Rafe had shot out of his chair, and Arlo’s gaze flew up and widened as if he had suddenly realized Rafe was a big guy. But Rafe didn’t yell. He just stared stonily at Arlo and warned, “Never do that again.”
Arlo actually gulped and looked at me like a little boy who’d done wrong. “Sorry, Star Shine,” he’d murmured, and pushed the tray toward me.
“Your dad is a piece of work,” Rafe opined tightly as we lay on the bed hours later. He trailed his fingertips down my bare arm and my eyelids drooped tiredly. “Has he always treated you like that? The physical stuff too?”
I tensed at the fury I heard buried beneath his words. “No. I promise. He’s never been the greatest at remembering I exist, but when he does, he’s usually casually affectionate and kind. You’re witnessing the worst version of him. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
When he’d arrived this morning, Rafe had explained he just wanted to be there for me to keep me company for the weekend. Owen was covering his Saturday appointments. Neither Roger, Kendall, nor Jude could get away this weekend, though Roger was planning to fly out on Tuesday to spend a few days with me. Rafe hadn’t liked that I didn’t have anyone with me for support, so he’d jumped on a plane.
Even lying in his brawny arms, I couldn’t think about what his presence here meant without freaking out.
Instead, I confessed my guilt over wanting to be anywhere else. Tears burned in my eyes. “I’m a terrible daughter. An awful human being.”
Rafe tightened his hold on me. “You are not. Arlo isn’t making this easy on you and I can’t even imagine how you’re feeling about your mom.”
“I hate her right now,” I admitted.
“That’s understandable.”
“I hate being here.” My whispered confession rang out between us. “There’s a reason I don’t visit my parents a lot. It just . . . hurts.”
Rafe’s voice was gruff. “You want to talk about it?”
I couldn’t. I shook my head and closed my eyes. For years, I’d shoved down the ugly emotions I felt about my childhood, determined they would not ruin my spirit or my glass-half-full attitude toward life. If I spoke about it, if I popped the lid off that bottle and let the genie out, who knew what kind of mess it would leave me in?
Rafe’s chest moved up and down in a big sigh, but he didn’t push me.
“Talk to me about your family,” I implored.
“My family?”
“Yeah. What it was like growing up as a Whitman? To have siblings? I always wanted a brother or sister.”
“Okay . . . Uh . . . Did I ever tell you about the time Gigi catfished me?”
Laughter, and the relief of amusement, glowed through me. “No.”
“She was only ten. I was eighteen and somehow she found out about my crush on an older woman.”
I grinned harder. “Go on.”
“I’d just broken up with my high school sweetheart and I’d decided that younger women weren’t for me.” Mirth trembled in his voice. “I set my sights on this younger friend of my mom’s, but she was still a good fifteen years older than me. Newly divorced and I was convinced she was giving me the eye.”
I was convinced she probably was.
“Anyway, I’d told a few of my friends that I was going to sleep with her before I left for college. And out of nowhere, she starts private messaging me. So I think I’m in. Thankfully, I said nothing overtly sexual to her in those messages, because when I turned up at our rendezvous point, Gigi was there on her bike to confess I’d been messaging her all along. She blackmailed me into taking her for ice cream every week for the rest of the summer. She said if I didn’t, she’d send a file of the private messages to my parents.”
Shaking with laughter at her ingeniousness, I quizzed him, “What happened next?”
“I bought her goddamn ice cream every week and lied to my friends about what happened.”
“You never got your older woman?”
“Well . . . I got a different one at college.”
A flash of irrational jealousy scored through me, but I ignored it. I was too exhausted to deal with it and the myriad of emotions bubbling inside me. “Tell me another story.”
“Uh . . . let’s see . . . there was the time Hugo and I decided we wanted to be David Attenborough and took off to live in the wild while we were on vacation in Oregon. My dad sent search and rescue after us.”