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)
But slowly. Over time. Because I knew that she was easy to spook right now. She'd handled her parents, siblings, and aunt and uncle well. Even Fallon's refusal to spend any time with her. Today would be a bigger test. It would be overwhelming handling everyone's happiness and relief mixed with some definite anger and resentment at once.
So I wasn't going to go at her again this morning, knowing she had enough on her plate. But we damn sure weren't done talking.
She'd walked into my room while I had that new song floating through my head. For the first time in years. And that song? Yeah, that song was about her. Like all the rest had been since she left.
It had been starting to really come together, words cascading into my head, begging to be put in the right order so it could all finally become something.
I'd all but given up hope on having that part of myself back again.
All I needed was her.
Not to say she was my muse. That was a cheap and ugly thing to call a person who existed to do more than help you write music, but I think maybe being able to complete the story I had started to albums ago was what was calling to me. Her return was the completion of one thing.
And the beginning of something new, something unexpected.
I always wanted her to come home. But I never expected it to be for personal reasons, that there could be something between us.
I wanted her to come home because around every holiday and every club gathering, Summer could be found with a far-off, sad look in her eye. I wanted her home because Iggy still couldn't have an outing with me without mentioning Ferryn and wondering where she was and if she was okay.
I wanted her to come home because it bothered me that one event had so wholly changed the entire course of her life.
And, yeah, I wanted her to come home because I felt a little guilt in it all, I wondered if everyone looked at me as though me acting faster or refusing to take the girls to that shopping center in the first place could have prevented all of this.
I had a hand in all that happened.
I wanted to know she was okay and living a good life so that some of that guilt could go away.
I didn't want her to come back expecting that a crush she had eight years ago might be something she still carried with her and now that she was legal, I could act upon.
But here we were.
In so many ways, everything had changed. Yet in others, there was so much that was still the same.
We still fell into conversation easily. We still debated things with a lot of passion. We still enjoyed each other's company.
She was changed, yes, but I don't think quite as much as she thought she was changed. I was pretty sure that under a few deep levels of hard that a rough life had piled on her, she was still the same girl. The one who liked baking Christmas cookies with her mom. The one who fretted about her library books being late because her Aunt Reese was the local librarian. The girl who soaked up all the life lessons casually tossed at her from her uncles who had all led pretty colorful lives. The girl who had a connection with my sister like nothing I had ever known until I was a much older adult, until I had become part of a brotherhood.
Those were all still parts of her. And, for some reason, I felt like she was choosing not to see them. Maybe it made it easier for her. Maybe whatever life she had been living couldn't allow those things into it. Maybe those parts of her were seen as soft and weak in a place where she had to be hard and strong just to survive.
She had likely been so steeped in that world that she forgot that she deserved more than to simply survive.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I missed that someone else was in my room until they spoke.
"I know my brother had some words with you last night," Cash started, making me jolt back, finding him standing just inside my doorway. "But I just wanted to come in here and tell you that if you ever fucking lie to my face again, you will be out of this fucking club, you get me?"
Cash was generally not the brass. Reign, always groomed from boyhood to eventually take over the club, was the harder one, the one who cracked down, the one who made it clear that you would pay for fucking up.
Cash, well, Cash was generally known for fucking up. Under his older brother's shadow, Cash was given a longer leash and he used it to screw around, break rules, have fun. It made him a more laid-back person. He wasn't known for cracking down or doling out threats.