Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
It has to be the most surreal feeling in the world. To be someone’s family. To belong somewhere. To have people you can depend on. To not sleep with your bedroom door locked to keep your stepdad out, or with the baseball bat hidden under your bed.
Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to wrap my head around the other stuff that happened aside from Snow’s surgery. Namely that Conrad, while lying in the hospital bed, declared that we’d move out of our apartment and into their house. Even though he made a very compelling case about my neighborhood being shitty and me needing help with Snow and whatnot, all I could do was stare at him with my mouth open and eyes wide.
Wyn was right by Conrad’s side, holding his hand, and she threw me a serene smile. “He usually gets what he wants. You should probably listen to him.”
Callie scoffed from behind me where she sat in one of the chairs. “Yeah, right. No, you should listen to Wyn. She’s the boss of the boss.”
“I don’t have a boss,” Reed chimed in from where he was sitting beside Callie.
It was Ledger’s turn to scoff then, who was seated in one of the chairs also but on the opposite side of Reed and Callie. “Says the man swimming in poopy diapers. All because he doesn’t want his wife to have to wake up in the middle of the night. That’s whipped behavior.”
“Hey, stop giving my brother a hard time,” Tempest said from beside him. “You changed the twins last week because you didn’t want me to ruin my new manicure.”
“Which is very gentlemanly, Ledge,” Wyn said.
“Exactly,” Callie confirmed. “It doesn’t mean whipped, it means you love your wife so much, you’d do anything for her.”
“You fucking started it,” Ledge grumbled.
“Watch your fucking language, yeah? That’s my wife you’re talking to,” Reed argued.
“I can talk to my sister however I want,” Ledger argued back.
“Don’t talk to my husband that way,” Tempest chimed in, before turning to Ledger and blowing him a kiss.
“Then tell your husband to not mess with me,” Reed grumbled in much the same tone as Ledger had.
“Oi, take your own advice and watch how you speak to my wife,” Ledger said.
“You—”
“All right, enough,” Conrad barked, putting a stop to their perpetual ribbing of each other. “No more arguing. And just to make it clear”—he turned to Wyn, his blue eyes intense and his lips twitching—“she is the boss, and if it means I’m whipped then I fucking am.”
Wyn blushed and everyone hollered and clapped. And I thought this is what I want. This is what I always wanted, a family, comradery, bantering, being surrounded by people who care about each other. Not to mention I wanted this for my sweet and shy sister, who’s always been around toxicity and drama. And if there was a chance she could get that, I should take it.
So I said yes—not that they would’ve let me say no—and then and there they all sat down and made a plan, a schedule of sorts, of who will do what and on which day. Callie, Tempest and Wyn would take turns making meals for me and Snow, so I didn’t have to worry about cooking. The guys would be in charge of talking to my landlord and then helping me pack things so we could move as soon as possible, without giving any notice. There were duties involving laundry and who would drive Snow to the doctor’s appointments. Who would be there for Snow when I had to go to work and so on.
And I would’ve taken all of that. In fact, I am taking all of that, without feeling completely overwhelmed and freaking the fuck out that none of this is real and could be snatched away from me any moment.
Until Callie brings up the topic of college. And not Snow’s college but my college.
It’s moving day. So it’s been a couple of weeks since Snow’s surgery and we brought her home from the hospital today, and by that I mean the new home: the Thorne house. The moving is all done. Ledger and Reed brought in all the boxes and the girls helped me unpack and set up my room and Snow’s as well. She’s taking Callie’s old room upstairs, and I will be in the downstairs room, the one I had slept in the night that changed my life. The fridge is stocked. The pantry is stocked. We have beef chili for dinner and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting for dessert. Everyone is gone; Tempest and Ledger had to leave early because they had to relieve their sitter; Wyn went home too, to be with Conrad, and Reed is picking up Callie soon.
So I’m totally not expecting her to drop this bomb on me, but she says she’s been looking into colleges for me and Bardstown Community College has a dance program. She herself wanted to go back when she was at St. Mary’s and if Juilliard hadn’t accepted her application. While it hadn’t been her first choice, she still wanted to dance—she’s a ballerina—and she would’ve taken any opportunity to go to college to study it.