Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 110273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Kash chuckled.
The tension broke in the room.
A few laughed.
“No, I’m not him.” He squeezed me, rocking me gently from side to side. “Bailey would know. She did know.”
“Hold up again.” Seraphina had a hand in the air, and she was standing in front of the couch. “You’ve met him?”
Her question was directed toward me.
I nodded. “I did.” I did not tell her the circumstances.
“Wha—Huh?” She gaped again, rotating to Cyclone and back to me, and then to Peter. “Not fair! We don’t know anything that’s going on. Chrissy’s dead, then she’s alive. Payton is actually Cyclone’s mother. Kash has a twin brother. What about me? Do I have a secret mother, too?”
Oh.
Oh, no.
The hope in that last sentence broke me.
I started to pull away from Kash, but he held me back. “They need to do this. Not us,” he murmured in my ear.
Peter edged from his couch, and he knelt in front of Sera- phina. He took her hands in his. “Quinn is your mother, Ser,” he whispered, though all of us could hear.
“But…” Her head folded even farther down, her chin resting against her chest.
Peter scooted all the way up to her, taking her gently into his arms. She went with him, her hands still in fists as her arms wrapped around his neck. “What’s wrong with me? Why is it always me?”
I strained to get free.
Kash kept me back.
I knew he was right, but I just wanted to grab my sister, hold her, say anything I needed to say to take away what she was feeling, and I had no idea what she was feeling. I just knew she was hurting, and it was a hurt that could change a person.
“Honey.” Peter eased back, smoothing the hair down the sides of Seraphina’s face. He framed her face in his hands. “Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing. You know why your mother was how she was with you?”
“Why?” A hiccup-sob.
“Because you were what Quinn knew she needed to be. You’re kind. You’re loving. You got all the goodness from her and from me. They mixed together and made you.”
“Dad.” But she grinned.
He grinned, too. “It’s true.”
“You didn’t get a crazy brain, Ser. We might be smart, but sometimes it sucks. Do you realize how hard it is to shut down this thing?” Cyclone pointed to his own brain, looking and sounding frustrated.
It worked. Seraphina’s grin got a little bigger. “I’m not smart like you guys.” She looked to Cyclone, me, and finally back to Peter.
“Honey. Sweetheart.” Chrissy leaned forward, touching Seraphina’s arm. “Take it from someone who lived with one of those ‘crazy smart’ brains, you have something they don’t have.” Chrissy’s gaze swept up, spotting me before she looked back to my sister. “I’ve seen what you can do. You have a genius that you’ve not even shared with the world. Do they know?”
Seraphina’s face got red, and real quick. “No.” Her head ducked down again.
Peter cast a questioning look at Chrissy, who made a show of pressing her lips closed.
“I know!”
“Cy!” That was Seraphina.
“I won’t say anything. I mean, I won’t tell them to look in your drawing pad, because then, you know, they’d know.”
Matt suppressed a snort.
Marie and Theresa were both fighting back grins.
Kash buried his face into the back of my neck, his shoulders moving up and down.
“Smooth, Cyclone.” I gave him a thumbs-up.
His grin stretched. The little shit knew exactly what he just did.
Seraphina was now beet red. “Cyclone!”
“What? I didn’t say a word.”
“Well…” Peter hugged his daughter once more before moving to rest his back against the couch, next to Chrissy’s legs. “Whatever is in your drawing pads, I’ll be eager to see when you choose to share with the family.”
Seraphina and Cyclone had more questions about Chase, about when they would meet him. Kash was firm, that it wouldn’t be until much later—much, much later. The questions weren’t as quick with Chrissy, about what she went through. It seemed as if they knew to tread gently, as if they were scared of what question would unearth a new minefield.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Cyclone asked.
It took a second before someone clued in.
He was staring at Chrissy. Then I caught a backward glance over his shoulder to Payton, and I figured it out first.
“You know what happened at the court yesterday?”
He looked at me. “Yeah.” He flattened his mouth. He wasn’t going to share how he knew. That meant he had known who Payton was before Peter told him this morning, too. Or I was guessing. There was a look in his eyes, a deeper understanding than my little ten-and-three-quarters-year-old brother should have, but it was there nonetheless.
He had known.
“You want to know why Chrissy never said anything about being held captive?” I asked.
He gave me a quick nod. “She said she didn’t know, but she did. She just told us she did.”