Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
My sister might have been very go-with-the-flow, maybe even sometimes a bit naive. But she wasn’t stupid.
“Yeah,” Rune said.
“I have time. Hammy and I are quite comfortable in our hotel room. We are all ears.”
“You know, sweetheart, I think this might be a conversation we should have in person,” Rune said, surprising me.
“Little problem there being that I am basically a whole country away from you right now.”
“I was thinking maybe Carmen and I could come visit. Once I get the all-clear to fly. We will grab a hotel so we don’t cramp your style. Then we will tell you everything you need to know about what’s going on.”
“On the one hand, I’m very excited at the prospect of you guys visiting. On the other, that sounds ominous as hell, and now I’m stress-sweating.”
“I’m not going to go into details over the phone,” Rune said. “But you can trust me when I say there will be no more trips to hospitals that you have to worry about. We’re safe. I’m not going to let anything happen to your sister.”
“O…kay. I mean, I trust that you can take care of her. But I’m going to need to insist you visit ASAP if you’re going to be so cryptic.”
“As soon as it’s safe for me to fly,” Rune said.
“And I’m going to be extra clingy with the texts and calls until we get this all squared away.”
“We’ve got nothing else going on,” Rune said. “We’ll be happy to answer.”
“Okay then. I guess I should let you guys both get some rest. I’m calling first thing in the morning.” Which would likely be early afternoon for us, so that worked out great.
“We’ll be waiting,” Rune said.
“Okay. Well. Goodnight. I love you. Both of you.”
“Love you too,” I said, then hit the end button. “We’re going to California?”
“Yep.”
“To tell her everything that happened?”
“Look, I know you’ve kept a lot from your sister, but I think if we are going to make a real go of this—and I want to—then I think we have to bring her in on some of this shit. But we will leave out the bodies.”
“How do we leave out the bodies?”
“We tell Sof that your cousins came in, started waving guns, shot me, but then… Vas scared them off. That’s all she needs to know. She doesn’t talk to that side of the family, does she?”
“Not really, no.”
“Then that’s where we leave it. They got scared off. They ran. Case closed.”
“I guess that can work. She’s not really going to do a deep dive on it.”
“Exactly. And I do think she needs to know the details about us. And my job.”
“Yeah, I don’t like lying to her.”
“So, we will head to California. Talk to your sister. Bring her her vase. Hang out. Catch some dry heat. And head home.”
“The clubhouse?” I asked.
“Where else would we go?”
“It’s crazy how much that place already feels like home,” I said, snuggling closer to him. “But I think it’s actually you who feels like home.”
Rune pressed his head to the side of mine.
“I love you too, baby.”
Epilogue - 2 weeks
“I still say this is too soon for you to be moving around like this,” I grumbled as Rune followed me into my old bedroom.
The whole house felt oddly foreign all of a sudden. Even though I’d spent years in it and only a few weeks at the clubhouse.
It just… it wasn’t home anymore.
By the time we got there, Spike and Cain (mostly Cain, since he was the more handy of the two) had been working on the place for days—throwing out the fridge food, donating the pantry staples, packing up sentimental items, and putting all the furniture out on the lawn with “Free” signs on them.
They’d also patched up the hole I’d kicked in the wall, repaired the railing, and even fixed a leaky faucet, and started a deep clean.
“If by ‘moving around,’ you mean sitting my ass in different rooms, I’m going to have to disagree with you on that.”
“You didn’t have to come at all.”
“Sure I did.”
“You’re supposed to be taking it as easy as possible so we are ready to fly out next week.”
“I’m fine. Got the all-clear from three different Hailstorm doctors.”
“But that might change if you overdo it.”
“Yeah, I’m clearly taxing myself,” he said, waving at the bed he was sitting on.
I was being overprotective, I knew.
But I’d almost lost him. I was not willing to do anything that might make that happen again.
We’d been quite a pair the past couple of weeks. We were both forced into bed by his mother, cousins, and some of the aunts. And as much as I was not accustomed to being taken care of, it had been nice to be able to just focus on sleeping and healing without having to think about what to get for food or who was going to do the laundry.