Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
I arched a brow. “It’s not even eight.”
She giggled. “We’re early risers around here. You’re going to have to get used to it.”
For real? There was a biker club across the property. You’d think everyone would be dead to the world until two.
And I would not be getting used to it. I wasn’t going to be around that long. This had to end, and it had to end soon. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take it.
Not when Silas kept confusing every rationality that I possessed.
“We’re almost ready for breakfast dessert,” Elena added with a grin.
“Breakfast dessert?” I asked in a cloud of amused perplexity.
Meems hummed as she started to mix the batter. “I always figured there was no reason for holding off on the best things in life, so rather than capping the day off with sweets, we tend to start them that way.”
A single one of my brows arched for the sky. “I do remember the cherry pie we capped the night off with last night.”
It was probably the reason Silas smelled like cherries all the time. Decadently sweet while the man dripped with poison.
He was nothing but confliction.
Meems chuckled. “Well, that is because we had a very special guest at the table, and besides, we do a whole lot of indulging around here. You might as well sample the good if it’s sitting right out in front of you.”
My stomach twisted. I wanted that. To live that way. To reach out and take a little of what I wanted when it was offered to me.
Too bad that offering usually bit me on the hand.
“And was a little good going down in that bedroom last night?” Elena wagged her brows.
Pure suggestion.
My throat grew thick.
“Um…no. Absolutely not.”
Whatever had gone down between Silas and me last night and this morning definitely could not be considered good.
At best, it was greed and gluttony and dipping your toes in dangerous waters. That was if you were one of those ‘look on the bright side’, positive sorts of people.
Tantamount to tossing around a nuclear grenade if we were at all being practical.
Because I was pretty sure the small amount of safety I’d built around myself was close to being blasted to smithereens.
Kaboom.
Obliterated with a brush of his malicious hands.
Meems’s gaze swept over me, looking me up and down, as if she could see the imprint of her grandson’s hands plastered all over my body.
Not that we’d really gotten up to much, but to me, it felt illicit since I hadn’t experienced anything close to that in a long, long time.
In discomfort, I shifted on my feet.
“It sure looks like someone wanted it to,” she speculated.
Did this woman read minds?
I huffed. “No way.”
“Yes, way!” Kai peeped like it was a game, holding onto Elena’s neck with both hands as he leaned back and beamed my way.
Elena laughed. “I think it’s written all over you, Brinley Webber.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you have a thing for my brother.”
“No, I’m not, I can’t…”
I didn’t mean for the last to come out, and I wrung my hands when I realized the way it sounded.
Exactly the way I meant it.
But I didn’t need either of them privy to that. No one got that piece of me, not that there was ever anyone there to hold it.
Except everything slowed, and the playfulness drained as Meems set her mixing spoon aside.
The woman looked at me as if she’d known me my entire life.
Like she cared about me.
Wanted the best for me.
“You are worth every good thing in this world, sweet one. Don’t you ever question it or let anyone make you believe that you don’t deserve it.”
“I…” I couldn’t force real words out around the lump in my throat, but I finally managed to whisper, “You don’t even know me.”
She eased around the counter, and there was no stopping the burn at the back of my eyes as she approached.
She simply took my hand and squeezed it. “But I can see you. Hear you. Feel you. And I feel your pain the same way as I’ve had to feel it in every single one of my grandchildren.”
Sorrow wisped through her aged features. “I couldn’t stop it, though Lord knows I wish I could have, but somehow I’ve been blessed enough to get the chance to try to see them through the other side of it.”
A rush of tenderness and understanding gushed out of Elena, and she held Kai tighter as she stepped toward us like she was drawn.
That same pain that I’d sensed in her last night was present, but it was muddled by the type of hope that her grandmother was talking about.
“And no, I can never take away the atrocities that were inflicted on them. Can never erase the horrors or the memories or the scars. But I can love them through it. I can be there to urge them to accept every good thing that is set in front of them rather than them rejecting it because they’re afraid of it being ripped away.”