Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that he’d always had his hearing.
When, in fact, he hadn’t. He’d gotten the hearing aids around the age of five, and Lysander had started to speak shortly after that. When he felt like it.
Hell, there were times that he still signed because he just didn’t feel like talking.
Or wearing the hearing aids.
Sadly, Lysander had gotten so much shit for his afflictions in high school that he’d never really gotten out of his awkward stage. Never really truly felt comfortable with his autism, either.
He’d put in a lot of hard work and attended tons of therapy to get him to where he was today.
He worked, had a kid, and lived a life that you never would’ve expected out of the traumatized boy that he’d once been.
“I’ll talk to you about it when I get to Mom’s,” I said. “You have Frankie with you?”
“Frankie,” I could hear the humor in Lysander’s voice. “Yes, he’s here. He has a class project that he has to do on the family tree, and he’s asking Mom questions.”
“Okay, be there in five.”
I was there in less than five, pulling up behind Lysander’s pickup with a grin.
It was dirty.
He hated when it got dirty.
But the snow that we’d had last night, paired with the rain that we’d had this morning, meant that there was no way in hell he could keep it clean driving down Mom’s driveway.
I headed inside to find the three of them at the kitchen table.
Mom had cooked dinner, and I helped myself to a healthy portion of it before I sat down at the table.
“You spelled Beaufort wrong.” I pointed to Franklin.
He grumbled. “It should be spelled ‘f-e-r-t’ if that’s how it’s pronounced.”
“Just because you want it to be, doesn’t make it so,” I pointed out.
Franklin shot me a glare. “Your parents wronged you.”
“They did,” I agreed.
My mother snorted. “What are you doing here, baby boy?”
“I’m your baby boy,” Lysander pointed out the obvious.
I sighed. “It was a saying, brother.”
“Saying, maybe. But incorrect, nonetheless.”
Always literal with my brother.
Instead of dwelling on it, I changed the subject. “I have something really important to talk to y’all about.”
“What?” Lysander asked.
“I think we should sell our shares of the Condors and the Cowgirls.”
Silence.
Utter and complete silence.
“Why would we do that?” Lysander asked.
I explained everything that had happened today, not leaving a single piece of information out.
If I was going to do this, they needed all the facts.
Even the ones that my mother would rather not hear.
She didn’t get along with Seraphina.
After Sonja’s death, my mother and Seraphina had never been the same.
Mom had tried, but Seraphina made it impossible.
There was no way to fix something that one party refused to admit was broken.
So, they’d been estranged for years, and Mom had grown resentful as she watched her daughter continue to spiral. And watched her ex-husband refuse to admit that their daughter was broken.
“What do you want to do?” Mom asked quietly.
“I want to sell every single bit of our shares,” I said. “If we do, then Court, who I plan on selling the team to, will have a majority of seventy percent, enough to do what he wants to do. More than enough if he gets Charleigh to side with him.”
Mom looked like she saw peace in that moment. “Okay, let’s do it. Lysander?”
“I’m down,” he said. “As long as we get fair market value. I’m not going to sell my shares for a song.”
I grinned. “Then it’s agreed.”
I drank a beer at Hopps and didn’t notice the music pounding my skull, nor the people who tried to talk to me.
I was so lost in thought that I didn’t even notice the stool next to me being pulled back until Court said, “Why do you look like your parade was just rained on?”
Because it fucking was.
I’d given up eight months of my life for this stupid fucking team, and my father was shitting on that.
He had no fucking backbone.
“Bad day at the office.”
“What happened this time?”
Court was a professional soccer player.
Or had been before he’d gone to prison for killing his wife.
He was the single one out of the group that Apollo and the Dixie Wardens MC hadn’t broken out of prison.
Apollo had planned on doing the same for Court, but the week before the plan was set to take place, he’d been released. No build up. No indication that it was about to happen.
Just one day the guard came to his cell and said, “You’re out of here.”
He’d moved to the area anyway, hoping for a quieter life, desperate for a break from reality.
He’d bought the garage and had been working there ever since.
If it hadn’t been for his help over the last eight months, though, I didn’t think I’d be as successful as I was with the Cowgirls.