Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
I knew that motion.
He did it when he needed to tell you something he knew you didn't want to hear.
At least some things still made sense to me.
"You've always had pretty shit timing, Ferryn," he told me, and memories suddenly flooded back. Missing school buses. Getting there ten minutes late for the movie. Mixing up dates.
"Why? What's wrong?" I asked, feeling my stomach pitch at the idea that one of them was in the hospital or something.
"Nothing, breathe," Vance demanded, voice soothing, like I was some prickly stray he was worried of frightening.
And, well, it wasn't an altogether ridiculous thing to think, was it?
Except that little, very fucking little, actually frightened me anymore.
"Where are they?" I demanded, voice sharp even to my own ears.
"On a cruise," Vance told me, face apologetic.
A cruise.
If there was one place on this entire planet I couldn't picture my father, it was on a cruise.
Then again, he was hopelessly in love with my mother. If she wanted to go on a cruise, he would take her. He might do it whilst brooding and openly mocking various cheesy elements of such a vacation, but he would go. He would do whatever it took to make her happy.
"Their anniversary was last week," he added.
I wanted to snap that I didn't need to be reminded when my own parents' anniversary was, but, well, I guess I did. While birthdays were still deeply burned in my brain, the other dates started to slip away without a calendar to remind me.
"Where did they go?" I heard myself ask, heart sinking a bit.
"To the Caribbean. Left from Florida two days ago. It's a seven-day cruise."
And there would be next to no way for them to get back earlier.
Which meant if the word spread, they would be trapped on a boat for five more days, anxious to get home, ruining their much-deserved vacation.
"No one can tell them," I blurted out, hearing the urgency in my tone, knowing it was a weakness, but unable to bring myself to care, to rein it in.
"Beautiful, your parents have been waiting for your ass for years. They'd want to know the minute you came back," West reasoned.
"This is not your call," I reminded him, pinning him with a glare, finding myself a little annoyed when he didn't immediately look chastened.
"Pretty sure it is more my call than yours, pretty biker princess," West went on.
The thing was, he wasn't exactly wrong.
I had grown up in the club.
I knew how it went.
Brotherhood over everything.
Sure, those rules kinda bent a teensy bit when the men married and had kids because you would be a shit husband or father if you chose your friends over your blood, but almost as a rule for all the younger bloods, the single guys, they took that rule very seriously.
Clearly, West felt the same way.
A part of me respected that, was happy that my father still had such loyal men.
The other part of me, though, bristled. Because I knew if this was one of the men I had grown up around, they would have considered my side of things before simply shooting me down.
"Alright," Vance cut in when my mouth opened to snap at West. "Let's just think about this for a minute, alright?" he suggested, looking at West. "You know Reign can handle having to wait," he added. "But think of Summer," he said.
"That's a fair point," West agreed. "But... what? We tell Cash and everyone else, and he comes home to find out all of us have been keeping this from him for a week? You want to deal with the backlash of that?"
"That's fair," Vance agreed.
My father was never quick to anger, to overreaction. He had been in charge of an outlaw biker gang for a long, long time, dealing with all the wars, all the external and internal conflicts, he had learned to let a lot of things roll off his back.
That said, maybe I as only having a hard time picturing him making Vance and West's lives a living hell for keeping a secret because he had always been careful about not showing me those darker sides of his personality, his life.
It was something that almost seemed funny to me now, knowing that his dark and ugly looked light and fluffy compared to mine.
"Maybe it would be better to tell no one," I suggested, feeling a sort of balloon deflate inside me.
Even if I hadn't known what I was going to be expecting, I guess I at least anticipated a reunion of some sort. With my parents, my brothers, my aunts and uncles.
It was childish to crave it.
I hadn't even been aware it was there.
But there it was.
"Yeah? And do what about them?" West asked, jerking his chin toward the Hailstorm guards.
Biting into my lower lip, an old tell that had been long-buried, and I was sure dead, I reached for my phone.