Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 90315 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90315 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Willow smirks, and I nibble my lip.
“Okay,” I confess, “it feels good to know that if something bad went down, I’d be able to put up more of a fight. Because let me tell you, feeling helpless sucks ass.”
“I’m glad he’s training you. And the rest of it? I see the look he gets on his face when he talks about you. You’re not just roommates over there.”
I sigh, trying to decide how much I can tell her. Sure, she’s being super nice to me right now, but I’m not good at trusting.
“I get that it’s none of my business.” She holds her hands up and then pulls new ingredients out of the fridge. “You don’t have to tell me anything at all. I’m going to build a couple of lasagnas. Do you want to stay for dinner?”
“Um—”
“Gid will swing by here when he and Ry get back, so we can just inform him that he’s staying. He loves lasagna.”
“I mean, that’s a few hours away. I can go and come back—”
“Stay.” Willow sighs and reaches out to take my hand. “Please stay. I’d like to chat and get to know you better, and I promise not to be a bitch.”
“I, too, will do my best to keep my bitch on a leash.”
She snorts and walks back to the fridge. “We should drink wine while we do this.”
“Wine sounds great.”
Before long, we each have a glass of red, and I’m helping to assemble a lasagna.
“You’ve really never done this before?” she asks me.
“No. I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen at the White House. The chef would shoo me away.”
“Holy shit, you grew up in the White House,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean, sure, I knew that, but it seems like such an unreal thing.”
“Oh, it’s real.” I nod and sip my wine. “I wasn’t allowed to do much myself. No cooking. Someone cleaned my room.”
“Wow. Do you know how to clean?”
Laughing, I pull a noodle out of the pot. “Yes. I live alone now, and I don’t have help. I do it all myself. Except the cooking. Well, if it comes in a box, I can manage it. And I’m really good at using the microwave and calling for takeout. I know, that makes me sound spoiled as hell.”
“No, it doesn’t. A lot of people don’t cook.”
“Gideon’s excellent in the kitchen.”
Willow grins at me. “I know. Debbie was the best cook, and she made sure all three of us knew the basics. But Gideon loved being in here with her. He’d spend hours and hours with her, learning everything he could. I don’t think it was the food per se—I think it was that he wanted to be with his mom. We were all close to Debbie and Ray, but Gideon and Debbie had something special. Maybe because of the tragic way his biological mom died.”
What the hell happened to her?
I want to know everything, but my gut tells me that digging into that information is probably best done with Gideon.
Instead, I keep focusing on Debbie.
“How did Debbie die?” I ask softly.
“Cancer.” Her nose wrinkles as she sprinkles cheese over the sauce in her pan. “Fucking cancer. Ryker had just won the Stanley Cup the year prior, and he was going for year two in a row.”
“Wow.”
“He was in the middle of the season, and we found out about the cancer. It was aggressive, and already systemic. She passed when Ry was in the middle of playoffs, and he didn’t get to come home for the funeral.”
“Oh my God, that’s horrible.”
“Gideon came home when I called him and told him that time was running short. Ray wouldn’t leave her side, of course. Ray and Deb had the kind of love that you read about in those novels. That you dream about. He was obsessed with her, completely devoted to her. Gideon and I took turns bringing him food, sitting with her while he freshened up, but he slept with her, held her, wouldn’t budge. Not that that surprised either of us, because Ray was the OG of feral men for his woman.”
She takes a breath and a sip of her wine. We’ve almost made it through this bottle already, and I’m feeling . . . floaty.
I’m also riveted. Gideon rarely talks about his adoptive parents, and hearing this tragic story only makes my heart soften toward him even more.
“Gid and I were both in the room with Ray and Debbie that morning. Just quietly sitting, listening to her breathe. And then, suddenly, she just . . . wasn’t. Wasn’t breathing. It was the calmest, most peaceful transition.”
“Wow.” I wipe a tear off my face.
“Debbie loved so big, so hard, and she deserved to die with complete love and peace, and she did. But man, it broke us all for a while. Ray never recovered, and he passed two years later.”