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)
My favorite woman on the planet, beside my mom, blew out a breath before scrubbing her cheeks with her long, slender fingers, oblivious to her husband side-eyeing me. “Honestly, Nina, I got nothing.” She shook her head. “I thought you could build a cabin out in the woods, but that’s not safe unless you bought a thousand acres. The chances of being caught would be too high, and that doesn’t solve the issue that Duncan might need a pack. We talked about that.”
We had. I remembered that discussion right after I’d found him. That conversation had been a lot like this one, except now I had an idea of what I was doing and what I was willing to do for him.
When we first met, I would’ve probably done anything for him.
Now, there was zero doubt in my mind I would, and I’d do it with a smile on my face.
“Every option I think of has a dozen reasons why it wouldn’t work. You can’t hide what he looks like. You’re in danger every time you travel. What if you break down and have to pull over? What if someone looks in the window of your truck or trailer and sees him when you’re not around?” Sienna went on, her round face scrunching up.
That was exactly what had gone through my head too. Nothing worked. At least not long-term.
Matti cleared his throat. “I have an idea.”
We blinked at each other.
My oldest friend might be a different gender, a different species of magical being, and his own complete person, but so many times throughout our friendship, I’d thought there was something that tied us together. Maybe we’d been twins in a different lifetime. Maybe just siblings. I didn’t know, but there was something that had bonded us together.
And with just that look, I knew we were on the same page.
“You know what I’m going to say,” he warned.
I nodded. “I’m pretty sure I do, but go for it.”
The next words out of his mouth were exactly what I’d expected them to be. “You need to go to the ranch.”
I smiled, and it wasn’t a happy smile exactly, but it wasn’t a bad one either. Two weeks ago, there was no way that would have been my reaction to his solution. To what it meant. Much less what it required. At this point though, I’d already convinced myself of all the reasons why the ranch was the only choice Duncan and I had.
It wasn’t ideal, it wasn’t necessarily what I would’ve chosen if I had a few million dollars to buy a thousand acres of land, but… I was at peace with it. Life had thrown enough wrenches at me, and I had dodged, ducked, dipped, and dived them all, time after time.
Maybe it was time to start throwing some wrenches back at it.
This was my choice. My future. Our lives.
I’d had a decent idea of what I might be signing up for when I had kept Duncan instead of finding someone else to care for him. No one knew better than I did the kind of sacrifices you might have to make to care for a child with secrets even they didn’t know they carried. It wasn’t just the least I could do, paying the favor I’d been given forward; I liked to think it was my destiny. If I had one.
“I had a feeling you were going to say that,” I admitted and earned myself a satisfied, almost smug nod from him. There was a certain amount of pride you could have when you knew someone almost as well as you knew yourself. That was almost thirty years of friendship for you.
“Wait,” Sienna cut in with a wave of her hand. “Whose ranch? What ranch are we talking about?”
I raised my eyebrow at Matti in surprise, and he winced. “It’s where I lived with Henri for a few years after my mom passed away,” he explained vaguely.
It was the mention of Henri that had me glancing up at the ceiling.
Sienna picked up real quick on his word choice. “You’ve never really talked to me about that time in your life, Matti,” she said slowly, squinting a little. “And I’ve never brought it up because it was a painful time for you, but now I think I’ve missed something important.”
“Not important,” he emphasized that word, “but I don’t like talking about it because of Mom.” There was a beat of silence after he brought her up. He rarely ever did, and that went for both his parents. Matti cleared his throat. “I had to move hundreds of miles away to live with my cousin, who I barely knew back then”—I was pretty sure he still barely knew him, but I kept that thought to myself—“and had to deal with this new life I didn’t want,” Matti explained, seriously. “I wasn’t supposed to talk about the ranch while I lived there or after I left it.”