Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 118592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 474(@250wpm)___ 395(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 474(@250wpm)___ 395(@300wpm)
“No,” I finally said as his words ignited a spark of hope inside of me. “I don’t need you to ask me that.”
Dom fell silent and turned around to look at the lake again.
“Dom, I love them both. More than you can possibly know. But that doesn’t mean I’m the best man for them. My work-”
“Memphis, by the time my son and your man, Phoenix, left our apartment the day he told me he was involved with you and Brennan and that you were protecting him, I already knew more about you than you probably know about yourself. You think you and Ronan have the market on knowing that sometimes it takes doing something wrong to make something right?” he asked as he stepped away from the railing.
I didn’t know what to say to that so I just kept my mouth shut. He hadn’t come right out and said it, but it sounded like Dom was well aware that protection and personal security weren’t the only things Ronan’s group of men specialized in.
“Don’t bother coming to our apartment looking for Tristan. He moved back to his and Brennan’s place this morning. And thanks to that cat of yours, my husband and I will be looking for a white kitten for our daughter come Christmas time.”
I smiled at that before sobering. “How’s Tanner?”
Dom paused and turned around to look at me. “He’s strong,” he said and then a wistful smile crossed his features making him look younger and much less intimidating. “He gets that from his other father.”
I suspected the little boy got that from both his parents, but I didn’t say that. My mind was already in planning mode.
“Dom,” I called before the man reached the stairs leading down to the driveway.
“Yeah?”
“When’s your next family dinner?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Brennan
“You okay?”
I turned around to look at my brother who was watching me with a worried expression. I was tempted to tell him I was fine, but I remembered how much that phrase had fucked things up for me so I smiled and said, “Yeah, just nervous, you know?”
Zane smiled and put his arm around me. His lips skimmed my temple. “Try not to worry, you guys are going to figure it all out.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t as confident as my brother.
“I’m going to head outside to watch the kids play,” Zane said. “You want to come?”
“I’ll be out in a second. I just want to help finish setting the table.”
Zane nodded and left me to it, though I wasn’t surprised when he cast me another concerned look. I suspected that between me getting shot earlier in the summer, the abduction and my subsequent meltdown, my brother was going to be looking at me that way for quite a while.
“Hey.”
I looked up to see Beck heading towards me, a stack of plates in his hand. He’d clearly been wrangled into table-setting duties too. Which was fine because it got us out of dish duty afterwards.
My cousin – something I’d always considered him even though we were in no way related – looked pretty good considering the struggles he’d been facing with his ongoing battle with depression. At eighteen, he was near the six-foot mark and had shaggy brown hair that seemed to perpetually hang in his eyes. He had an average build, though he looked skinny at the moment. I attributed that to the last couple months that he’d been going through one of his down times. I resisted the urge to ask him how he was doing because I knew he got that question a lot, same as me. I’d heard enough from Cade, when he’d come to check up on me while I’d been staying with Eli, to know that Beck’s medication had finally seemed to stabilize him and he’d also found a new therapist who he seemed to like.
“Hey,” I responded. “They got you too,” I said as I motioned to the plates.
He smiled and said, “Beats doing dishes afterwards.”
I chuckled. “Or babysitting duty,” I added as I heard my brother yelling at Leo to put his pants back on.
Beck heard it too because he said, “What’s with your nephew and his need to be naked all the time?”
I laughed. “Leo’s convinced he’s only invisible if he takes all his clothes off.”
“And the sneakers?”
“He says that he can run so fast that the sneakers become invisible.”
Beck laughed at that and then shook his head. We worked in silence for a moment before he said, “I’m sorry about what happened to you.”
I couldn’t help but stiffen – it was a reaction I knew would take me a while to get over.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m hanging in there. Therapy’s been helping a lot,” I said.
“Yeah, my dad said you were doing that.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure how much Beck knew about what had happened in the weeks after the rape. I hadn’t even been able to call what Drake had done to me that, because it made it too real. I’d chosen to see it as a sacrifice I’d made to keep Tristan and Tanner safe, rather than something that had been done to me. I hadn’t even realized how my mind and body were reacting to the assault in the days after I’d been released from the hospital until I had started talking to a therapist. She’d told me the obsessive hand washing, showering, the need to keep moving – they’d all been my brain trying to cope and regain control of me, my surroundings, the people around me.