Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 113270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
“I don’t know what’s happening right now, but someone better tell me why I can hear my daughter screaming from her room while a bunch of adults are in here having a shouting match, and they’d better do it quick!”
“I’ll get her, babe,” Bennett offers, subduing immediately, and I don’t blame him. I’ve never seen Norah’s head so ready to pop off, and she’s been in Red Bridge—and through all manner of trauma—for a while now. A crying, unattended daughter is very much the straw that broke the camel’s back for almost any mother, and Bennett is smart enough to recognize it.
I look down at Breezy, intent to check on her as she leans over the trash can and throws up again, but Logan steps forward and shoves me back with a hand in my chest. “Stay the fuck back.”
I don’t think, and I don’t hesitate. In one smooth motion, I hit him again, a harsh jab to his left eye.
“What in the actual hell, Tad?” Norah yells.
“Are you kidding me?” Logan groans, holding his other eye now. “Why do you keep fucking punching me!”
“Bam! Bam!” Autumn screeches from Bennett’s arms, unfortunately having entered the room while I was zoned out in the red mist of anger.
“Oh my God,” Breezy cries as she moves back over to the kitchen table and collapses in a chair again, pulling the collar of her shirt up over her mouth.
“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” Logan yells, lunging toward me with an outstretched arm I easily deflect.
“Fucking try!” I challenge back, waggling my eyebrows and my fingers all at once. The aggression is long repressed but cathartic and reminds me a little bit of my old life—the one I lived the few months before I made the decision to move to Red Bridge and swore I’d never go back to.
There were plenty of dark nights in Chicago when I would go to bars just looking to get in a fight with someone. Back then, it was the only thing that stopped the pain. But now, it’s like it’s the only thing that’s making me feel in control of whatever is going on with Breezy. Like my sole purpose of being here is to protect her.
“Hey!” Norah yells as Autumn repeats something that sounds an awful lot like “fucking.”
Bennett hands Autumn off to Norah and steps into the fray, which only escalates things more. He puts a hand on my chest, which I answer with a shove. Logan lunges, seemingly in Bennett’s defense, but Bennett stops him with a fist to the chin.
“What the hell?” Logan yells, yet another part of his face succumbing to the role of punching bag. “Why am I the one who keeps getting punched?” And when he starts to move forward, his eyes and fists very much intent on returning the violence, Norah’s voice booms him to a stop.
“Enough!” she screams, her voice guttural and loud in a way that shakes the windowpanes. Shoving through us, she grabs two bags of frozen peas from the fridge and shoves them at Logan. He opens his mouth to yell, and she cuts him off with a hand. “No! No, I don’t want to hear it! I’m done! Get out of this house! Right now! All three of you!”
“Me?” Bennett questions.
“Yes, you! In fact, especially you! So help me, if the three of you aren’t out of this space in five seconds, I’m getting the shotgun!”
Logan moves first, the back screen door slamming behind him as he jumps down all the deck stairs and falls to his ass in the grass. Bennett opens his mouth to argue, but when Norah snaps her fingers, he follows with the same hurried movements.
I linger, trying to check on Breezy and actually get a look at her face before I leave, but Norah isn’t having it. “Tad Hanson, I swear to everything holy, you better get out of this house right now!”
“Bye-bye!” Autumn shouts. “Bye-bye-bye!”
I reach out to squeeze Breezy’s elbow, but exiting as directed and depositing myself in the backyard where Bennett and Logan reside.
Logan is sitting down in one of the Adirondack chairs that look out toward the rolling hills, and Bennett is pacing behind him.
But when Logan pulls a cigarette out from the carton in his pocket, before he can light it, Bennett snags it, breaking it in half.
“Hey!” Logan jumps to his feet and drops the bags of peas behind him.
Bennett’s finger is a sword, pointing aggressively in Logan’s face. “Smoke somewhere else if you want, but you’re not doing it here, anywhere near my house or my daughter.”
“Fuck me,” Logan remarks, smacking Ben’s hand away. “It’s not like I planned to blow the smoke in her face. I only smoke when I’m stressed—which I am now because the two of you freak shows felt like making me bleed.”