Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
“I can’t be fussed with remembering to take a freaking serum once a week,” Timothee mumbled.
“For fuck’s sake,” Aleksei groused.
Aleece joined the conversation.
“You know, sometimes you make it really hard to love you two,” she declared, aiming this at Timothee and Errol.
The first narrowed his eyes at her.
The other surprised me by having the good grace to look abashed.
Aleece kept at them.
“I’m mortified to my soul our future sister-in-law, new to our family, is standing there, watching you behave like this.” She said this to Timothee, and then turned to Errol. “I’m chagrined she felt she had to step in and clean up your mess.” She shook her head. “I’ve tried. I’ve really tried to understand where you two are coming from. I try, and then I hear about more shit you both get up to. I’m exhausted with the effort. I’m done. I can’t beat it back anymore, make excuses for you. I also can’t fight the feeling any longer that I’m just so fucking ashamed of both of you.”
She moved to leave but stopped and looked back to me.
“I’m sorry for my family, Laura. We’ll chat some other time.”
I didn’t get the chance to nod my acceptance, she was gone.
“Great. Thanks,” Timothee said snidely. “Now you’ve turned Aleece against us.”
“I’m curious,” Aleksei said. “How does it feel to have the world land on you, and anything and anybody but yourself and your own actions are to blame for the shit that befalls you, which happens to absolutely nobody. Rather than your actions impacting you and those around you, which is what everyone else experiences?”
Timothee changed tacks.
“You blew it with that ritual, brother,” he sneered.
“You’re following the wrong tapes, brother. The impact of our attendance was overall positive,” Aleksei replied.
It was?
Germaine didn’t make it out to be that way.
“But even if it wasn’t, we stood for compassion today and gave a family thrown into one of the hells no one wants to visit a thin thread to cling to, that we grieved with them and we didn’t blame their loved one for something that wasn’t her fault,” Aleksei concluded.
“Always with the answers,” Timothee retorted.
“Fuck, Tim, just let it go,” Errol said on a sigh.
Timothee turned on his younger brother. “You’ll toe the line, and now, instead of kissing Dad’s ass, you’ll kiss Aleksei’s feet because you’ve got a dick the size of a toothpick and couldn’t think yourself out of a paper bag.”
For a flash, an expression hit Errol’s face that set ice into my veins.
Then he shot back, “Fuck off.”
“Gladly,” Timothee returned and stormed out.
“I liked her,” Errol announced, taking our attention to him. “I really did. She just wasn’t marriage material.”
He was talking about Nata.
I gritted my teeth, something that helped loads with me holding my tongue.
It didn’t escape me that neither of those two males had directed one word to me yet.
It wasn’t like we had dinner together every night.
But seriously?
“If they don’t want you for you, Rol, and require promises you can’t keep, then they aren’t worth your time. Be the kind of male who makes that their loss,” Aleksei advised.
Errol hung his head in a manner I suspected, in the past, got him out of some serious shit.
Aleksei didn’t bother witnessing it.
He took my hand and off we went on another hike through the Palace, where I didn’t see much more, just a rehash of what came before but in reverse.
I waited until we were in his JetPanther, and he was waiting for course approval, before I asked, “Our attendance at the ritual was overall positive?”
“When you mentioned Germaine, I asked Muriel to run some numbers.” The onboard computer announced our course was cleared, Aleksei took the stick, and we had liftoff. “Females sixty years and under, overwhelmingly positive. Older, they’re not happy. Males, the results are mixed. Sixty and over, they’re pissed. Thirty and younger, about half and half. Males in between, we’re at sixty-five percent positive.”
Boy, Muriel could run some serious numbers in a short period of time (however you did that).
“Germaine made it sound dire,” I remarked.
“She was riding the high of your approval rating and knows it’s undoubtedly taken a hit. But regardless, she takes any negativity about our family personally. And a warning, darling, there is quite a bit of it, as we suspected.”
“Ah.”
“Therefore, anything negative sticks in her craw,” Aleksei finished. “If it happened without her input, she loses it, like I’m guessing she did.”
I didn’t confirm, but I didn’t need to.
With that out of the way, now the big stuff.
“I’m sorry, honey. My actions instigated what just happened,” I said quietly.
“Don’t think that for another moment, Laura,” he replied tersely. “It feels like we’ve been racing to that scene since the first time Tim got the idea to douse me with ice water in the middle of the night, getting nothing but a mild dressing down. Whereas I got a chat with my father about how I need to buck up because that’s the kind of thing that makes a boy into a male.”