Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
And he was here for me.
“Means the world you’re here,” I said quietly.
“Where else would I be?” he asked casually.
A million other places.
I didn’t share that because it might make me cry.
Instead, I pulled Laird out of Elsa’s hold, kissed his beautiful head, and then invited, “Come see the house.”
When I turned, I caught Dair’s attention on me, and I nearly tripped at the expression on his face.
He was taking me with Laird in, and I didn’t know if he wanted to wrest the child from me and hand it off before he carried me to our bedroom or if he wanted to shove me and Laird in a car so we could kidnap him.
He visibly jerked himself out of whatever thoughts he was having and winked cheekily at me.
I wasn’t fooled by that wink.
We hadn’t gotten anywhere near talking about kids, but now I knew that conversation would be perfunctory.
I wanted them (two, hopefully both girls).
And I knew he wanted them as well (hopefully also two, but likely he wanted boys).
I bounced Laird on my hip and sashayed into the house, talking gibberish to him.
And again, the weight of Mum dying hadn’t lifted.
But I was feeling even better.
Alex had the wardrobe open and was touching the clothes.
I was sitting at the vanity and touching the bottles of perfume.
“I know it’s soon, but just saying, when we get there, we can auction these off for charity,” Alex said gently.
We were in Mum’s room.
“Yes,” I agreed, picking up one of the bottles, taking off the stopper and smelling it.
Bad idea.
It obviously smelled of her. And because it did, memories crashed and clashed, unbidden, through my brain.
Not one of them good.
I stoppered the perfume and put it down.
“Five things.”
I twisted on the vanity stool to look at my sister, who was now sitting on the side of Mum’s bed.
“Five things?” I asked.
“We need to find five good memories of Mum. Memories with nothing bad attached.”
She might as well ask me to go with her to Mars to plant a garden.
“Alex—”
“We don’t have to do it now, just…can we make a date, before I leave, to have some sister time and compare notes?”
I could do that, seeing as she was staying a week and a half, and it’d probably take us that long to find five good memories of Mum, so I nodded.
“I wasn’t…” I couldn’t find the word, so I decided, “right until you were here,” I confessed. “It’s not like I’m right now, I just feel better that you’re here.”
She tipped her head to the side and whispered, “Same.”
I shook my head and continued my confession, “I was such a shit sis—”
Alex corrected her head with a snap. “Stop it, Blake.”
She got up and walked to me, then sank cross-legged on the floor in front of me.
There was something so Alex about that, but I was not this Blake at the vanity table, not anymore.
Thus, I got up, pushed the chair aside and sank down on the floor with her so our knees were brushing.
Her gaze warmed at my actions, and she reached for my hands.
We both took hold.
“We were like…fellow captives,” she said.
Oh God.
That was the perfect way to describe it.
We so were.
“You did what you could to survive,” she went on. “And so did I.”
“I wish I’d snapped out of it a lot sooner,” I remarked.
She shook our hands. “Who cares when you did? You did. And I carry guilt because I left you to it.”
That stunned me. “You left me to what?”
She lifted a shoulder, but her half-shrug was ill at ease. “You were the next in line. She focused on you. It was like she was grooming you to be like her. Blake, I knew she was doing that, even when I was young and I didn’t understand what it was called. I knew it wasn’t fun for you. And I escaped. I left you to it.”
“It was hardly your job to protect me from her.”
“We should have been a team.”
“We were,” I asserted, and her head twitched. “Okay, maybe not a very functioning one.”
She started to laugh.
I tightened my hold on her. “But we made it through.”
“Thank you for all you did for the wedding.”
“I loved doing it.”
“It was the perfect day.”
“I’m glad.”
“And thank you for taking the hit of Mum’s…scene so I didn’t have to think about that while Rix and I were in St. Lucia.”
I managed not to flinch at thinking about Mum’s “scene.”
More progress.
“Not a problem.”
“You’re a good sister, Blake.” She leaned toward me and added, “The best.”
The tears stung so bad, I had to release them.
Though she was watery, I saw the same happen to her.
Listing forward, we hugged.
We heard a throat cleared at the door, let each other go and looked that way.
Dad was standing in the door, a gentle, settled look on his handsome face as he took us in.