Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Let it deafen me. The last time I was this close to him, and he wasn’t putting on a show for a cop, was ten years ago.
It was crazy how one look at my old crushes activated that deep longing in my soul like no time had passed at all.
Alexander Montgomery used to walk the halls of Titan Prep with a smile for everyone, and a kind word for everyone else. He was just one of those people you couldn’t help but like. And it wasn’t just because he was pretty.
Which he very much still is.
I raked him up and down, unable to stop myself. The years had been good to him—again Alex went from a handsome young man to a gorgeous grown one. All of the parts of him that still needed filling out took to the task with his valedictorian gusto.
His shoulders were wider and thicker. His youthful plumpness shed away, leaving behind a hard, ropey body. And the bulge straining his running shorts was bulgier.
He even smelled more delicious than that time in high school when I pretended to accidentally bump into him. Back then he smelled like apples and erasers. Now, he smelled like cinnamon, pine, and the salty spray of the ocean—a combination that didn’t make sense, but scrambled my head all the same.
“So...” I ran a finger down his chest, tensing him up tighter than a bowstring. “Do you take over his nursing duties when he’s off on break? Or are you some kind of pervert with a geriatric kink that gets off on watching old ladies sleep?”
“What the hell did you just—!” Alex caught sight of my grin. Slicing his rant off, he sighed—flicking his shiny, brown locks out of his eyes. “Fucking hell, all right. You caught me. I decided to end our six-month dry spell by climbing atop the drooling, nearly vegetative woman who called me a wet, limp sock of a man.”
I choked on a laugh, slapping my hand over my mouth. “Oh my gosh, Omma said that? Wow. She was never nice to any guy I brought home, but that’s particularly cutting. And incredibly untrue.” I dropped my hand, folding it safely behind my back. “Only have to look at you to know there’s nothing limp about you.”
A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “Hmm. Well, that’s Ha-eun Kim. She’s the master of reducing a man down to nothing in seven words or less.
“Or at least she was”—Alex sidestepped me and walked out—“until you took over.”
I let him go. What would I even say to stop him? His words were for Sue, not me. The marriage between the four of them had clearly gone sour, and the last place I should be is in the middle of it... right?
I mean, my fourteen-year-old crushes couldn’t compete with my sister’s marriage to these men, or the very real child she had with them.
“No,” I whispered, silently closing the door. The only thing for me to do was make peace with my mother, find a way to keep her happy and comfortable for the rest of her short time, and then leave with the inheritance Sue stole from me, and the one my mother wanted to give me.
Micah, Rhodes, and Alex straight up told me to my face that they wanted Sue gone. It’s not like they’ll miss her.
But Nari will, another voice whispered through my mind. And she’ll spend every day of the rest of her life believing her mother ran out on her.
Her mother did leave her, sense returned. For better or worse, the true Sue is gone, and I don’t have the right to trick that poor child into believing anything else.
Shaking my head, I tossed all the whispering voices out of it—focusing on my mother. Somehow, she was still asleep. The mother I knew never went to bed before me, or woke up after me. If I ever wanted to catch her asleep, I lurked around in the wee hours like I was stalking Santa Claus.
“Omma?” I perched on the edge of the mattress and took her hand. “Omma, can you hear me?”
Looking upon her then, still and frail in sleep, one truth struck me through the chest.
Sue did not lie to me. My mother was dying.
Her thick, salt-and-pepper strands were gone, leaving only a silk bonnet wrapped around her scalp where her hair used to be. Everyone I knew used to remark on how young Omma looked for her age. That they couldn’t believe she gave birth to us at forty.
I doubt she’d heard such platitudes in a while.
The cancer leeched away the deceptive smoothness and natural color to her complexion, leaving a washed-out, wrinkled version of my mother. Her eyebrows were gone. Lips dry and chapped. Eyes sunken in, and her frame bereft of nearly twenty pounds at least.