Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
“I can take it off if you want. It hasn’t been washed in weeks.”
I eyed the side of his deceiving, perfect face, wondering again if it was the food alone that had revived his grouchy ass. “Do you just like to argue for the sake of arguing, or did I do something to you in another lifetime that I don’t remember?”
I wasn’t much better than him in the first place, I knew it. Hadn’t I been giving it back to him just as much as he’d been dishing it? Hadn’t it made me secretly smile too?
A purple eye peered at me a moment before we made it to a deep driveway with a huge, downed tree across it. Beside it was a woman who had to be in her seventies or eighties, along with a man around the same age, holding a chain. A chain that was connected to an all-terrain vehicle parked beside it.
“Don’t say anything,” he repeated under his breath.
I watched the man move around the side of the trunk, like he was trying to find something. Where to hook it to? “We’re supposed to ignore them?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“What if they try to talk to us first?”
“I don’t care. Ignore them.”
He was serious.
“Don’t,” Alexander hissed.
I gulped.
Sugary-white hair crowned the woman’s head. Her neck and most of her face were covered by a colorful, red scarf. She waved as soon as she spotted us. I tensed.
“Gracie, don’t,” he repeated under his breath.
The man with the chain raised his free hand and waved it too. He was smiling.
Shit.
I tensed even more.
The muscles pressed against my chest did too.
And maybe I hesitated for about two seconds before I quickly lifted my hand and waved back.
Alex growled.
I ignored him.
“How is your day going?” the woman called out as we approached their property.
Alexander grunted, irritation vibrating through his skin and straight into me.
I still ignored him.
“Fine, ma’am, how is yours?” I hollered back, knowing he wanted to kill me, but I couldn’t stop myself.
They seemed so nice, and they were older. I was a sucker for older people.
“I’m letting the Bogeyman in tonight,” he threatened just loud enough for me to hear him.
Was that… a joke?
Was he fucking joking?
I leaned forward to peek at his face.
He was already shooting me a dirty look that made me really, really grateful we’d agreed to be friends. Or “friends.”
Friends didn’t kill friends.
“Dandy. Here dealing with this old stump,” she said with a shake of her head and another bright smile. “Are you staying at the Akita place?”
“Yes, ma’am.” It was Alexander who replied easily, his own tone almost as friendly, and not like he’d been shooting me imaginary murder daggers a second ago.
She smiled like that explained everything. “Y’all be safe now. Make sure your car is in four-wheel drive if that storm comes down this weekend. Those ditches have gotten us all,” the woman said.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” the man I was clinging to replied.
I glanced at the back of his head, at all that dark hair that I’d had my cheek pressed against for countless hours, surprised at his acting skills.
“Someone I know has driven into it once or twice,” the man said with the most adorable chuckle.
The woman gasped. “You said you would stop telling everyone about that!”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, sweetheart.”
She muttered something I couldn’t hear that made him chuckle. He smiled back at her with so much affection, it made my little heart yearn. My grandparents had loved each other, but they hadn’t been too playful. Every once in a while, I’d gotten a glimpse of a sweet, wonderful relationship, but more often than not, things had been quiet, but I’d always thought it was more that they were just tired.
But they’d had a lot hanging in the balance.
I think in a different lifetime, before I’d been born, they had to have been a lot different.
Before me.
Or more like, before my parents had lost their minds.
“Have a nice day!” the man called out.
“You too!” I hollered back, snapping out of it, trying not to feel guilty over things I hadn’t asked for.
I waited until we’d gotten farther down the road before I sighed.
“I thought I told you not to talk?” the man carrying me muttered.
“They were so polite. We couldn’t just ignore them.”
He snickered. “Yes, we could have.”
I swear…. “Do you not have any manners?”
“I have manners.”
“In your dreams maybe,” I muttered.
That got me another murder-glare that wasn’t all that scary.
Neither one of us said anything else as he kept going, until he stopped in front of a mailbox on the road. It was black and heavy-duty just like all the rest we’d gone past. But he peered down the overgrown driveway with two huge, downed trees across it.
Was there a house back there? If there was, it had to be set pretty far back.