Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Nope.
Not doing that.
I take the road toward the main house, where Austin lives with his wife. Except he’s not there. He’s still in the hospital.
The sprawling ranch house appears.
Several cars are parked outside.
More than several.
Family cars. Security, maybe. People gathered because Robin is home.
Good.
If they’re all here, I can warn them all at once.
Or they can all pull guns on me at once.
Whatever. If this is what destiny has called me to do, I’m ready to do it.
I turn off the engine.
Is Robin inside?
Or maybe she’s at the hospital with Eagle.
But the cars tell me enough. People are here.
The Bellamys.
I open the door of the car and step out. The Texas heat hits me again.
I smooth a hand down the front of my dirty and wrinkled black shirt, though smoothing doesn’t help. There’s no hiding the facial lacerations, the bruises on my throat.
I walk toward the house.
43
ROBIN
Star Bellamy, my mother, who was not at the airport, who did not wrap me in her arms the second I stepped off the plane, decided she wanted to cook a big meal at the main house for the whole family to celebrate my return.
Celebrate.
As if I’m returning from a vacation. Like we should have cake and balloons.
Though I admit the house smells amazing. My mom is a wonderful cook. Her Mexican food is delicious, and she loves preparing it. Sometimes she doesn’t even let her private chef in the kitchen, though she is helping tonight.
I want to be annoyed. I want to stand in the doorway with my arms crossed and reject the whole thing on principle because my mom doesn’t get to pretend she cares that I’m home.
But the house smells like roasted pork, toasted chiles, garlic, warm tortillas, melted cheese, cilantro, lime, and smoky rich mole.
My stomach, traitor that it is, growls the second I walk inside.
Mom made red enchiladas and green enchiladas, arranged in two enormous pans like she expects half of Texas to come through the door. She made crispy carnitas—my favorite—slow roasted from the moment she got word I was coming home, according to Raven. There’s mole poblano in a heavy pot on the stove. Guacamole sits in a massive bowl beside chips and stacks of fresh homemade tortillas.
It’s too much.
Everything in this family is too much.
Too much money. Too much pride. Too much history. Too many secrets buried under land that should have been just land.
When Mom leaves the kitchen and looks into my eyes, for a moment, she actually looks motherly. “Oh, Robin,” she says and she hugs me.
I let her.
Because even at age thirty, and even when you’ve never felt close to your mother, after being abducted and abused and not sure you’d ever see your family again, being held by her feels good.
Damned good.
She trembles against me, sniffling, repeating, “Oh, Robin. Oh, Robin. Oh, Robin.”
Maybe she does care.
Maybe she always did, just badly.
Or maybe she needed a distraction from her baby in the hospital, her husband’s suicide attempt and subsequent aphasia, and everything else.
I don’t know.
I’m too tired to know.
So I let her hold me. When she finally pulls back, her eyes filled with tears, she swallows. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Me too,” I say.
She sniffles again and then heads back into the kitchen. Savannah and Daniela follow her to help. Daniela is studying to be a chef, and Savannah is also a great cook.
I hate cooking, and because I’m still exhausted, even after a shower and short nap at Vinnie and Raven’s, I don’t go to the kitchen. And for once, Mom doesn’t make a snide comment about it.
I eat a chip dipped in guacamole and nearly burst into more tears because it tastes so much like home.
Then I almost choke because…Cruz.
Cruz isn’t here. And I feel like home should include him.
No.
No, no, no.
I need to talk to someone about Cruz. Daniela has emerged from the kitchen with fresh guacamole, so I grab her arm and lead her over to Hawk, who’s looking at his phone.
“I need to talk to you two,” I say, “in private.”
I don’t ask Raven or Vinnie. I love them both, but Raven will feel too much on my behalf, and Vinnie will immediately move into murder mode. Besides, they have Belinda to take care of. Raven is sitting with her looking through a fashion magazine. I don’t ask Falcon either. As much as I love him, he’s an ex-con, and his first instinct will be the same as Vinnie’s.
Hawk is different.
Not softer.
God, no.
Hawk is a blunt instrument with a pulse.
But he’s my brother in a way that feels uncomplicated even when everything else is a mess. He and I understand each other. And Daniela understands things most people don’t. Shame. Fear. Complicated devotion.
I pull the two of them into the smaller sitting room off the side hallway, the one Mom never uses because she says the light is bad.