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)
“He does, huh?” I whispered.
He nodded.
Then I nodded.
And he said, very seriously, “If you’re done not crying, we can start the tour.”
If I was done….
That did it. The grief left my body just like that. There was no way I didn’t look like a goldfish as I stood there, trying to figure out how I could respectfully respond to that, while also trying to process whether he was teasing me again or not.
Henri didn’t give me enough time to decide. He squeezed my shoulder gently one more time, a very werewolfy touch—and so unlike the man-boy I’d known who had never been very affectionate to anyone in my memories—and said, “Follow me.”
Chapter
Eight
“About half of the community who live in single-family homes own their own forms of transportation to get around the ranch. We don’t allow full-sized vehicles beyond the parking lot,” Henri jumped right into his explanation as we left through the door at the back of the building. It was next to the huge living room slash conference area where we had met the elders when we’d arrived.
Before the start of my tour, we had taken a quick detour after leaving the nursery and gone to check on Matti and Sienna. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to leave without making sure they were okay. I’d had an upset stomach more times than I could count, but they hadn’t. I’d peeked in the door, with Henri at my back, and found my friends passed out. After a quick refill of their glasses of water from the tap—Henri had explained they had an excellent filtration system for the whole building—I’d snuck back out without waking them up. They’d still looked like s-h-i-t.
Outside, there was a giant metal building directly behind the clubhouse that I hadn’t noticed yesterday. Along the front of it were three oversized garage doors, one of which was open, revealing rows of golf carts, UTVs, and I didn’t know what else. He gestured to it. “Everything in there is available to anyone who lives here, but we ask that you clean whatever you use if you get it muddy, plug it in to charge if the battery is low, and return it as soon as possible in case someone else needs to borrow it. No one will steal your belongings, but don’t leave them in the vehicles.”
I said, “All right,” since he was ahead of me and couldn’t see me nod.
“We’ll take one now so we can get around faster,” he said, entering through the opened bay.
Knowing exactly what he was doing and where everything was, he unplugged the first side-by-side two-seat all-terrain vehicle in the front row. It had a short bed in the back. From where I stood, there were multiple cables strewn across the floor, some of them connected to the sides of golf carts, but most of them were hung up on hooks along the walls.
“Are they electric?” I asked when I got to the garage door.
He kept doing what he was doing. “Some. The ones in front are. We replace them as the older UTVs stop working, and only when they’re beyond repair. Nobody likes the smell of gas, but it’s wasteful to get rid of them if they’re still running. The tanks are kept low. If you use one, you need to put gas in it. There are portable tanks along the wall in the back. We write the dates of when we fill them up so we can use the oldest ones first when needed. Keep an eye out for that.”
“All right,” I agreed again. “Where does the gas come from?”
“Someone takes them into town to fill them up every week or two,” he explained. “Leave the keys in when you return them. Back them in, if you can.”
I pressed my lips together, fighting the urge… and I lost it. I smirked. “Yes, sir.” My friend’s cousin leaned to the side of where he was by the ATV, and I gave him a little smile.
Just as quickly as he’d appeared, he was gone again, setting the cord he’d been holding over one of the random hooks on the walls. “Ready?”
At the vehicle, I slid onto the bench and buckled the thick seat belt across my chest and lap. Henri did the same, then started the UTV and pulled out of the building, turning a hard right almost immediately onto one of the wide gravel paths that connected the structures in the community together.
The trees soared over us, old and majestic. I wondered what they’d look like in the fall. Some of them were bound to change color; they weren’t all pine. The air somehow seemed even fresher and more inviting than it had yesterday. I wasn’t subtle about taking in more than one big lungful of it, my skin reacting just as much as my nose did, goose bumps popping up along my arms.