Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
“Kai wove!” He beamed at me.
My broken heart flailed, and the words wheezed out of me.
“And I love Kai. So much.”
My hands shook as I finished changing him into a fresh diaper.
I pumped sanitizer onto my hands, rubbed them together, then he was back in my arms.
He peered up at me. “Meems got yummy?”
I choked over a laugh. “I bet she does.”
I carried him downstairs. The morning news droned from the television, the volume set nearly to mute.
I assumed it was used as background noise.
Habit, maybe.
They hardly needed it.
Not when Elena’s laughter resonated from the kitchen.
Ricocheting from the tiles and rebounding in the type of joy that I thought would have been crushed by what had happened to her.
But it was real and alive. Filled with hope and belief even when someone had tried to stamp it out.
And maybe it was all because of them that I felt a flicker of that hope bluster up inside me.
Maybe I really would leave this place remembering who I once wanted to be. Maybe they were forcing me to see something so much greater than the demons that fought to keep me chained.
Because as I padded out on bare feet onto the cool floors, I felt freer than I had in a long time.
No doubt set on a collision course that was going to destroy a piece of me, but maybe the pieces I’d reclaim would be worth the pain.
Or maybe I was just really good at telling myself lies.
Glee lit Elena’s face when she saw us walk in. She was sitting on the far counter, facing us, her legs swinging as they dangled over the side.
Her dark brown hair piled on her head and her pretty face void of makeup.
“Well, good morning.” Suggestion oozed out of her mouth.
She said it at the exact same time as Meems was mumbling, “Speak of the devil,” into the dough that she was mixing in a big metal bowl.
I hooked Kai onto my hip. “Are you all admitting that you were talking about me behind my back?”
I cocked my head like I was really pissed off by the idea. Too bad it was punctured with lightness.
It seemed it was catching when it came to them.
As if what happened between Silas and me last night hadn’t been the most exceptional thing I’d ever experienced.
“Behind your back? No way. Everything we have to say, we say to your face. You will find no backstabbing around here.” Elena grinned.
Yeah. The only thing you found around here were secrets and skeletons tucked under rugs and hidden in closets.
“And what is it you have to say?” I challenged, pure sass.
Giggling, Kai pointed an innocent, accusatory finger. “Say!”
Meems arched a brow. “I think your attire says plenty enough.”
She let her gaze wander down my body, a burden of proof. And it was just then I was realizing I stood there in nothing but Silas’s T-shirt.
Barefoot and itching as the fabric swam around me.
It hit me at the middle of the thighs, quite a bit longer than half the skirts and dresses I normally wore.
Their faces promised I’d never donned anything so scandalous.
Redness rushed my cheeks.
I never took myself as being shy, but I felt like covering under their scrutiny.
“Oh, well, I ran out of pajamas. You know, I didn’t get to bring that many of my things here, so I just grabbed the first thing I could find.”
I’d run out of something, all right. My sanity.
Meems’s brows lifted higher. “And the pile of laundry I left folded for you on top of Silas’s dresser yesterday wouldn’t do?”
She might as well have been delivering a closing argument. The jury convinced.
Guilty.
Of course, that jury only consisted of one.
Elena, whose expression filled with triumph. “Did you get naked with my brother?”
I choked over the knot of surprise that clotted off my throat. Leave it to Elena to go straight for the jugular.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I spluttered, hanging onto Kai like he was a wall I could hide behind.
“Oh, come on, Brinley. Silas literally carried you out of the clubhouse last night. Tossed you right over his shoulder. Caveman style. It was clearly a man setting out to make his claim.”
Heat crawled up my neck.
Tendrils that wrapped around to constrict.
“No, no, you have it all wrong. He said you and I were breaking the rules, going to the clubhouse last night. When he told me to come back here and I refused, he carried me. Can you believe the audacity? That man is nothing but a brute.”
There, my own closing statement.
Maybe I’d swayed her judgement.
“And he left me there?” she opposed.
Right, there was that.
I glowered at her though there was zero heat behind it, my own dare twisting my voice with a distinct insinuation. “You had Trevan to watch over you.”
“He never even looked my way,” she countered.