Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
“And not a goddamned thing,” I growl, holding her hand too tight. This possessive streak whips through me. “Maybe Mason Law’s in the hospital, but I’ve still got a bad feeling. You’re safer here with us. The guest room’s still yours.”
Her face crumples. “But after I—”
“Woman, you’re fine. Wouldn’t dream of sending you back home, letting you out of my sight.”
Her face smooths. She knows I won’t budge on this lone condition, keeping her close.
Leaning in, I press a kiss to her forehead.
I have to remind myself that right now, if I can’t be her lover, I’ll damn sure be family. I’ll look after her the way Ethan would’ve wanted, just like an older brother would.
“Okay,” she whispers back with a shy smile.
“Go on up and get some rest. I’ll fetch Nell from my folks and then get everybody fed.”
20
ONE OF A KIND (OPHELIA)
I am the absolute worst human being.
I wake up feeling like I just got beaten to death by a bag of bricks.
Crying up a storm in one day will do that, though I barely remember falling asleep.
I just know I grabbed a few of my things that crept into Grant’s bedroom during our brief fling, relocated them to the guest room, then curled up and passed out. It was all I could manage after letting go of the one thing that brings comfort when everything sucks.
Never mind the special anguish of hurting this wonderful man in the process.
He hid his wounds pretty well, but I could tell my words cut him to the bone.
I’m just surprised he didn’t pull a Grant on me. It feels worse that he didn’t.
If he’d gone cold and stonewalled me the way he used to when we were kids, whenever anything happened that might force him to have an emotion, that I could’ve handled.
But the fact that he was so kind?
So gentle.
So understanding.
Like all he cared about was making me happy.
For a confused second, I almost took my need for space back right then and there...
Only, I can’t.
I’m too much of a messed-up wreck right now to have my heart in the right place for anyone.
I’m not stable enough for a relationship or even a job.
I’m living my life balanced on a freaking tightrope between order and chaos, love and loss, life and death.
I shouldn’t even keep staying here, probably, but I don’t think I could stand to crawl back home to the old house, either. I can’t go there and rattle around alone with the ghost of my dead brother and the shades of two women who aren’t dead yet, but who’ve already left me behind.
I think I’m the luckiest heartbreaking bitch alive because Grant let me stay after I pushed his soul through a cheese grater.
And I wake up to another wrenching reminder of what I’m walking away from, snuggled against my side and sleeping blissfully.
Nell.
She’s an adorable pile in a cute pinafore dress with her curls pinned up in a prim, ladylike cascade. Somehow, she managed to wedge herself into the curve of my body without falling off the edge of the bed.
She sleeps like a kitten, and that ratty old stuffed unicorn is right there with her, clutched in her arms and pressed up between us.
Grant must’ve told her I had a rough day.
I don’t know why she’s so attached to me, close as a kitten, but the feeling’s mutual.
Painfully so.
Maybe that’s what’s got me extra screwed up right now.
The fact that this return to Redhaven feels like skipping right past all the normal stages of a relationship and going straight to a settled life with a husband, a daughter, a family, a home.
I’d be lying if I said a deep, restless part of me hadn’t craved that like a slice of caramel-drenched cheesecake.
I love this little girl.
About as much as I love her uncle-slash-cousin-slash-dad.
About as much as I love my own family, and that’s when it punches me right in the feelies.
How much I miss Ros.
I’ve been so caught up trying to sleuth out the mystery of her weird behavior that I haven’t seen her as my sister ever since I came home. More like another problem to be solved.
But I miss my sister, the little girl who’d follow me around just like Nell follows me now.
A bittersweet smile pulls at my lips.
I can’t count the number of times I’d wake up in the middle of the night to a shaking figure tucked against my back, hissing at me not to look because that brat would never admit she was afraid of the dark.
Of course, she couldn’t make it through the night without her big sister.
I still remember the first time she wanted to talk to me about a boy, too. The first time she got rejected. Her first date, an awkward night out with a boy in her class band that went exactly nowhere.