Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
“His mother is a knockout, not as gorgeous as you, but she’s a fine-looking woman, but she was only a decent lay. I had no intention of going back for more, because what I got wasn’t all that good. So I definitely had no intention of having a relationship with her. This means it is what it is. Life is like that. Shit happens, you deal the best you can trying not to harm anyone in the process, and no matter what it throws at you, you keep going.”
“You keep going,” I whispered, focusing on that rather than his not as gorgeous as you comment.
And it was a good thing to focus on.
More wisdom from Doc Riggs.
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
“You’ve got a great kid,” I told him.
“I know. What did you two do?”
“I showed him the cabin.”
He threw back more martini before he said, “He’s been here before.”
“I know. That’s how I know he’s a great kid. He humored me even though we both knew he’d been here before.”
Riggs grinned.
I enjoyed it in the way I could, and tucked the way I couldn’t somewhere I hoped it never escaped, because I knew, the more I got to know this man, the more power it would have to hurt me.
“I also like your mom,” I shared.
“She’s awesome,” he muttered.
“Is your sister like her, or you?”
Another cock of his head, this one curious, when he asked, “What am I like?”
“A really great guy, but one who doesn’t wear crisply ironed, blemish-less white, cotton prairie shirts, but instead, lives in a house that it’s good no one in it is living with a disability, and it’s as weird as it is frightening and fantastic.”
He let out a bark of laughter.
There it was.
His friend had been assaulted by an unknown attacker, and it only took two martinis, some history sharing and me to crack a lame joke to get him to laugh.
Good.
“My sister, Kate, is like Kate,” he answered after he stopped laughing. “She’s the branch manager of a bank in Seattle. She moved about a year and a half ago when her partner got a promotion and had to head that way.”
“Right.”
“We miss her. Them. Her man is a good man, and they’ve been together since high school. She isn’t far, but it also isn’t easy to fit the trip into life.”
“I bet.”
His gaze became searching. “You okay about the bullshit Kimmy landed on you?”
“I heard some stones cracking together, maybe a couple of minutes before you showed.”
His brows drew together ominously. “Where? Out here?”
I pointed in the direction of where the stables used to be.
Then I had to shift my legs unexpectedly because he instantly got up, putting down his glass and pulling out his phone to engage the flashlight.
I got up as he jogged down the steps, and with the light aimed to the ground, he moved in the direction of the derelict trail that used to lead to the stables.
“You come this way at all?” he asked, having stopped with his light still to the ground.
I went from house to pier and back. I hadn’t explored. Something else I intended to do, and soon. I hadn’t even put out the hammock.
“No,” I called back. “Are there footprints?”
“No.”
Well, that was a relief.
He kept looking around, and he did this awhile, veering from the path, from what I could tell, and also going farther than I thought was needed.
Only after he looked around the space where I thought the stables had been—not that I’d investigated, just that the trees there weren’t as tall, so they had to be younger—did he come back.
I’d gone to the top of the steps, and I didn’t move out of his way, even when he was only one step down from me.
And I didn’t because I wasn’t certain about the expression on his face.
“Well?” I prompted when he didn’t say anything.
“Looks like some stones have been freshly dislodged.”
“But no footprints?”
He shook his head.
That meant animals probably did it.
That expression, however, was still on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s not a thing,” he didn’t quite answer.
“What’s not a thing?”
“It’s dark. I’ll come out tomorrow when it’s daylight and look again.”
Oh no.
“What, Riggs?”
He took a second, and I was about to ask again, when he pushed out, “There aren’t any animal tracks either.”
I stared at him.
No animal tracks either.
So who—or what—dislodged those stones?
I knew one answer.
And that answer was great.
Just great.
ELEVEN
Our Patch
Nadia
I woke to the sound of two things.
One was thunder rumbling in the distance.
The other was scratching at the reading nook window.
My nose was cold, the covers up to my neck because it got super chilly at night, so much so, I considered turning on the furnace, and I was a girl who not only grew up in Chicago, but also liked being cold at night so I could cozy into covers to sleep.