Total pages in book: 217
Estimated words: 207224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1036(@200wpm)___ 829(@250wpm)___ 691(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 207224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1036(@200wpm)___ 829(@250wpm)___ 691(@300wpm)
I return my attention to the road, and Beau finally pulls away. I look in the side mirror, seeing James with his hand on Danny’s shoulder.
“What’s going on?” Beau asks, splitting her attention between me and the road. She knows this is more than an extension of last night’s drama. Of course she does. And because she is my best friend, I want to tell her. And because Danny is my husband and I don’t want her to think bad of him, I don’t want to tell her. I wonder if I’m overreacting. I wonder if I’m being unreasonable. I wonder if I have the right to feel this hollow. Our sex life has always been colorful. It’s always been very physical and sometimes violent. The nature of our relationship has always dictated that. Who Danny is. Who I am. Two people like us coming together was always going to be . . . volatile.
But today?
Perhaps it’s my emotions. Perhaps my frame of mind, considering the recent bombshell. I don’t know. I sigh and look across to my friend. She looks together. What I don’t know is whether it’s a front because Beau has certainly played me before. Shown perfect serenity and felt utter despair. “Are you okay?” I ask, turning in my seat to face her. I reach for her sunglasses and pull them off, and she lets me. She knows what I’m doing. There’s no evidence of tears. No squinting eyes from a headache. Perfectly together.
“No, I’m not,” she says, making me recoil. She plucks her shades from my hand and slips them back on before bracing her arms against the wheel. “None of us will be okay until a certain someone is dead, and since we’re back to wondering who the fuck that certain someone is, we’d all better buckle up.”
On those words, I reach for my seat belt and pull it on. “Have you got sunscreen on?” I ask, eyeing her bare arm where her scar is visible. I would smile if I was confident her wound was out loud and proud with no underlying reason. Like trying to fool us all that she’s fine.
“Yes, Mom, I have sunscreen on.” Beau grimaces at the road. “You know he won’t let me leave the house without smothering me in it.”
“Good.” I get my cell out and text Esther, asking what Daniel’s plans are, since he’s developed a habit of not answering me. Then I drop it in my lap and rub at my head. “Of course The Bear couldn’t be Perry Fucking Adams,” I blurt at the windshield. “And do you know what’s most fucking annoying?” I ask, not giving her a chance to answer. “If I had known what was going on in my husband’s head, if he had bothered to share anything, I would have fucking told him Adams wasn’t capable.” I spent weeks with the idiot, seducing him, stroking his ego. He was bent, corrupt, a liar, and a cheat, but he didn’t have crime on that level in him. I wince, looking down at my cell when it rings. Like Daniel can’t answer my texts, Esther can’t seem to either, but unlike my son, at least she calls me in answer. “Hi,” I say, clicking her to loudspeaker as Beau takes a left toward town.
“He’s just left with Tank and Fury. Fury’s taking him out on the water, Tank’s had an order from the men to catch up with you two.”
I turn my tired eyes onto Beau. I knew it. Goodbye freedom. Beau smiles, but it’s small. She feels the same, and Esther knows she will have been telling me something I absolutely don’t want to hear, but she’s bracing me. “Thanks.”
“How’s the drunken idiot?”
“Probably getting drunk again.” I reach into my purse and pull out my sunglasses, slipping them on, feeling tears biting at the backs of my eyes.
“What’s happened now?” she asks, exasperated.
I can hardly tell her that I said no and he didn’t listen. “Nothing,” I sigh. “We’re going shopping. Need anything?”
“Nothing,” she says, refraining from questioning me. I bet she grills Danny, though. And, like me, he will lie.
“See you later.” I drop my cell into my purse and sink into my seat. “How did James take the news?” I ask, turning my head, just catching Beau’s shrug.
“Quietly. You know James. He doesn’t say much, but he thinks lots.”
I laugh but not with humor. While my husband brandishes his reputation like a weapon, James keeps his off the radar. The deafening killer and the silent killer. They’re quite different like that, and yet scarily similar.
“I don’t want him to worry about me,” Beau goes on, and this time I am laughing with humor. What planet is she on?
“Next to killing, Beau, worrying about us is what our husbands do best.” I frown at the windshield. “Actually, given they killed the wrong man, I think they worry better than they kill.”