Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
But at least I had Roque. Or I had.
Living with him these past few days had felt easy in a way I hadn’t expected. Comfortable. Safe. Like we’d slid into this shared rhythm without talking about it. He’d been kind, funny, and steady, even when I wasn’t.
So naturally, my dad had something to say about that, too.
“You know,” he said, turning to me as if this had just occurred to him, “you can always stay with us. Your mom’s been saying it since day one. You don’t need to be shacked up with some boy in the middle of all this chaos.”
I blinked. “Some boy? I’m an adult, Dad.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to play house with someone just because—”
“Heidi lived with Bond before they got married,” I cut in, arms folded.
He grunted. “I said the same thing to her, and you know what? None of my damn kids listen to me anyway.”
I snorted, but it didn’t quite reach my eyes. I walked over to the window, just to have something else to focus on, and looked across the street toward Roque’s place.
It was dark. That was odd, he was supposed to be home hours ago. Out of habit, I’d been listening for the sound of his SUV and checking for the glow of his porch light. Maybe work ran late. It happened. Maybe Judd had called him in. Or maybe—hopefully not—he’d had to stop by Ailee’s again for something. Or perhaps he was with his family. He’d mentioned wanting to check in on his sister and see his new niece. He was close with his nephew, Cody, and I knew he’d been missing them.
But even as I tried to logic my way out of the unease crawling up my spine, it didn’t help that he didn’t text or call. And by the time I climbed into bed that night, his phone was still off.
I lay awake far longer than I wanted to, staring at the ceiling, imagining every possibility. Maybe he ran out of gas. Maybe he crashed. Perhaps he got caught up in something to do with the case—the one he wasn’t talking much about, which I knew was darker than he let on.
Maybe someone found out what he and Judd were doing, or perhaps he was hurt.
I reached for my phone, staring at the last message I’d sent him hours ago: You okay?
Still no reply, and I hated how the silence felt like an answer.
Roque
The call came just after I’d gotten to work.
At first, I didn’t understand what the officer was saying—his voice was too calm, too measured, the way people talk when they're trying not to fall apart themselves. I’d used it myself on quite a few occasions, so I was instantly on guard. But then the words hit, one after the other, like a brick to the chest.
Kemble and his wife, Aislinn, had been found dead.
Dead.
My best friend since we were kids. The guy I’d snuck out of class with, who’d stood beside me during every high and low, every stupid mistake and every hard-won victory gone. Just like that. And Aislinn, sweet, quiet Aislinn, who made him better just by existing. Who’d called me “Uncle Roque” from the second she’d found out she was pregnant.
But now those loving parents and people were taken from the world, leaving behind a huge gap that most people would never know existed.
I was already halfway out the door before the officer had finished the call. The roads weren’t great, but I didn’t give a shit. I drove like a man possessed, my hands white-knuckled on the wheel, the silence in the car heavy with everything I couldn’t say out loud.
The only small, bitter mercy in the whole nightmare was that the kids—Kairo, who was almost three, and little Kaida, who was eighteen months old—had lived. They’d spent the entirety of both pregnancies thinking of unique names that had strong meanings, and that’s what Aislinn had decided on for both kids, much to our amusement. Kairo meant smooth, worldly, and stylish, and that little guy totally lived up to his name with his quiet yet brilliant self. And little Kaida, she was given that name because it meant little dragon, and she’d proven that was the case from the second she was born. They were total opposites in personality but made up the world together.
They were in the hospital, still recovering. Carbon monoxide poisoning, the doctor had said. Kemble’s generator had gone out—just like I’d suspected it might—and he'd lit a fire in a desperate attempt to keep the family warm. But what he’d used to burn had released poisonous gas into the air. The only thing that saved the kids was the cold—they’d burrowed under so many blankets and duvets that it had created a barrier, keeping the worst of it away.