Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 132834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
And suddenly I got it. “You’ve seen some shit,” I said. Griffen nodded in agreement. “And now the idea of a baby is terrifying,” I finished.
“Pretty much,” Griffen said. “But I also get that I’m being irrational. And I know Hope will be fine. I’m still—” He shook his head. “She’s so vulnerable. The baby is so huge she can barely stand up on her own. I don’t like leaving her alone. What if—” He shot me another glance, this one sheepish. “I know, I’m working on it. Fortunately Hope’s a patient woman.”
“Are you going to be crazy when the baby gets here?” I had to ask.
Griffen nodded. “Maybe a little. I’m working on it.” He slid another glance my way, this one tentative. “I never imagined anything like this for me,” he confessed. “I never imagined falling in love. I never imagined marrying Hope and waking up every morning so fucking grateful she’s there beside me. And now there’s a baby—”
He rubbed his hand across his chest as if soothing an ache. “Hope, the baby—it’s like having my heart outside my body. Maybe if we’d had more time before she got pregnant. More time for me to get used to loving her, to being married. I’ve seen too many ways life can go wrong. I can tell myself all day that nothing is going to happen to us, but—” He stopped and met my eyes. “Some of it has happened to us. I’m doing my best to not let it take over. When I was on the job, I could just shut it off. But this is different. This is Hope and our child.”
Words failed me. I knew Griffen cared deeply for Hope. I suspected he loved her, but hearing him admit it, seeing the look on his face, the joy and terror, left me off balance. Griffen took care of everything. It hadn’t occurred to me that, in this, he might need someone to take care of him. I patted my hand on his shoulder and squeezed, echoing what he’d said to me earlier.
“Everything is going to be okay.”
I wasn’t sure if Griffen believed me, but his answering smile made me believe, for the first time in a long time, that maybe everything really was going to be okay.
Chapter Thirty-Three
SAVANNAH
I gripped the steering wheel of my car so hard my knuckles were white. Not a great approach to driving on winding mountain roads. Taking a deep breath, I tried to force myself to relax. One hand at a time, I let go of the wheel and stretched my fingers, putting my hands back on the wheel in a relaxed but firm grip at ten and two. Better.
I needed to get myself together. It had been a week since Finn and I had discovered Prentice’s briefcase, Ford’s notes, and that ticking time bomb of a ransom note. A week since he’d gone to see Ford in prison. I would have expected Finn to be a mess after discovering such a deep betrayal—I was still struggling to understand how Ford could have done such a thing to his younger brother—but Finn had been weirdly relaxed.
I don’t think I’d ever seen him smile this much. He joked around in the kitchen, playing along when Nicky asked to help, giving him little jobs that were fun, like buttering toast and sprinkling on sugar and cinnamon, then asking Nicky to taste test.
I, on the other hand, had been growing increasingly more tense as the week went on. Not because of Finn. Considering how he showed up at the cottage every night and what we did behind the locked door of my bedroom, I should have been the most relaxed I’d ever been. Finn was an excellent choice for a fuck buddy/friends with benefits/whatever the hell we were. Every night he came over, I came—usually more than once—and we both passed out, sleeping practically entwined until he crept out before dawn to start breakfast in the Manor.
No, despite my very satisfied body, my rising nerves were all about Lydia. She’d texted almost every day over the last week, growing increasingly demanding, until her final text early this morning just after I got out of bed.
Savannah, I’m in Asheville. We need to meet. I made a reservation for the Sunset Terrace at noon. I’ll see you there.
My heart sank as I read her message. She was here, in Western North Carolina, which meant I had nowhere to run. There was no point in dodging her now. She’d just chase me all the way to Sawyers Bend, and I’d rather face her alone than air our dirty laundry in front of everyone at Heartstone Manor.
I’d been running from this confrontation since her first text, my reasons a jumbled pile of No. Not only did I not want anyone to know what a disaster things had been with Oliver, I wasn’t sure I trusted her with Nicky. I was still hurt and angry over the way she’d treated me when Oliver lost himself to addiction, and I’d never forgive her for the way she enabled him, hastening his death. So many reasons I was running from Lydia. But it looked like Lydia wasn’t going to let me run anymore.