Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
I didn’t know how they made it work, but I figured that was something I’d find out when we got there in… fifteen minutes, according to the app. I hadn’t let myself get nervous. Either they let us stay or they didn’t. I either found someone who wanted a family enough to marry a stranger… someone like me… or I didn’t.
It wouldn’t be the first or last time someone did it to live there, Matti had reminded me.
If there was anywhere in the world where it would be normal to marry a practical stranger, it’d be at his cousin’s ranch.
But as the tree lines along the road got thicker and the evergreens got taller and wider, the scent of magic filled the cabin with so much potency, despite the fact the air-conditioning was blasting, I had started to wonder what exactly we were driving to. Matti had warned us the magic here was strong, but I’d thought he’d been exaggerating. This was the same person who had held his hands three feet apart to describe a spider he’d found in one of the men’s bathrooms at a gas station. It took most of my concentration to focus on driving and not pull over and stick my head out the window.
If Matti noticed how hard I was gripping the steering wheel, he didn’t call me out on it.
“Nina?” The sound of my friend’s voice brought my attention forward, away from the magic outside. He was sitting in the front passenger seat, and he had been since our last stop when we’d switched drivers so he could eat a hot dog—a hot dog that I’d just about begged him and Sienna not to buy.
Just looking at it had made me feel like I was going to end up with an upset stomach.
I relaxed my grip around the steering wheel. “No, we don’t need to go over the plan again. I got it.” We had gone over it twice already, but I got that this might be our only chance. “When we get there, you’re going to do all the talking. I’m going to leave my bracelet on until they ask me to take it off, and we’re going to do the same with Duncan’s collar.”
It wasn’t that complicated. Just… important. Our acceptance hinged on so many things that were outside of my control that it made me itchy.
It was either going to work or it wasn’t.
I squeezed the steering wheel again. “You haven’t been back here since you moved away?” I asked him, realizing I wasn’t sure he’d ever mentioned returning to the place where he’d lived for a few years.
“Not since I left at eighteen. There wasn’t anything here for me, other than Henri,” he answered. “Most kids who grow up on the ranch eventually leave. Some come back, but the majority don’t. At least that was the case back then. You grow up here, want to see the world, and then you come back, or you don’t.”
“And you didn’t.” Like his dad.
“Fuck no.”
Sienna and I both laughed.
“I know you don’t know the comforts of food delivery and next-day shipping, but it’s everything it’s cracked up to be,” he explained. “First time Henri took me to Denver, my brain almost exploded.”
“Next-day shipping,” I groaned with a laugh. “Spoiled.” Where we’d grown up, the nearest fast-food chain had been thirty minutes away. Our town had had two gas stations. It had been that kind of small.
“Yeah, yeah, but that’s why I think you’ll do just fine out here,” he noted, like I had another option.
As long as they don’t hate me on the spot, I thought but didn’t say out loud.
Matti reached back between the console, and I could only imagine he was petting Duncan. Or feeling up Sienna. “It’s going to be fine.”
He sounded like he believed it.
“If things don’t work out, we’ll come up with another plan. Find another community. I can only take a few days off right now because I have a meeting I can’t miss, but in two weeks, we can try something else. I heard a rumor a while back that there’s a place in Alaska….”
That struck a long-forgotten bell in my head. Before I could ponder it too much, I leaned forward. Something moved in the distance, darting across the road. It sure as hell hadn’t looked like a deer.
Blinking a couple of times, I watched the same spot, knowing I hadn’t imagined seeing things. Something else crossed the road. It was smaller. Fluffier.
“Matti….” I trailed off.
He stopped talking about Alaska. “Yeah?”
“I swear I just saw a centaur baby.”
He leaned toward the passenger window, his attention on the side mirror.
“No, through the windshield.” Letting off the gas, I slowed us down just as something even fluffier, white, and on four legs ran by. I pointed. “I’m pretty sure a centaur baby and two little wolves just ran by.” I pulled the truck and RV over to the side of the road and put it into park. The road hadn’t been busy since we’d turned on it off the county highway. There had been nonstop signs about it being a dead end, about there not being national forest access, but….