Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92941 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92941 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
“Hmm.”
“We never went without, but we lived modestly. Our parents chose to raise us that way.”
“They clearly changed their minds,” I said, gesturing at the room around us.
“My father knows how to invest.”
“Obviously.”
“I do, too,” he said with a grin.
“Good to know.”
“We had friends we played with,” he said, leaning his head back on the pillow as he tucked me into his side. “Families from church we spent time with.”
“Your dad went to church?”
“Trying to fit in, remember? That was what you did back then. It was bad enough that he was covered in tattoos like some kind of pirate. We had to be careful with the face we presented to the world.”
“That seems overwhelming.”
“They tried to shield it from us.”
“Kids see everything.”
“Yes, they do. Plus, it was infuriating to an eight-year-old, knowing that we wouldn’t actually catch the measles that was making its way through all the children on our street, but had to stay inside like all the other children anyway. We knew that we could never say that we were immune, but the urge was there. Thankfully, we had built-in playmates that we didn’t have to pretend around.”
“Is that why your parents had so many of you?”
“Five isn’t that many.”
“Five is practically a litter.”
“I’m going to tell my mother you said that.”
“Please don’t.”
“I think my parents had five children because as soon as one child was weaned, she got pregnant again until she was no longer able to. Back then, our family was actually considered on the smaller side. Though, I think that the other mothers were jealous of our mom because she didn’t lose any of us in infancy.”
“She’d lost two before your dad, though, right?”
“It was a long time before she was willing to talk about them,” he replied with a sigh. “None of us knew about her previous life until we were older.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that would be, to have children that no one even knows existed.”
“But worse,” he said, running his fingers through my hair. “With no proof that they’d ever existed except the family bible.”
“She doesn’t have—”
Beau shook his head. “She doesn’t have anything. They were buried on the farm, and all their things were burned. I’d imagine their markers were made of wood, which would be long gone even if there wasn’t a grocery store there now.”
“Holy crap,” I murmured, sniffling. I blinked away the tears in my eyes. Poor Mattie.
“That won’t be our life,” he said, sliding down the bed until we were nose to nose. “Our sons won’t get sick. They’ll be protected.”
“Sons, not daughters, huh?” I joked.
Beau just stared. It was a look that I was beginning to recognize. There was something he was nervous to tell me.
“Vampires are only male, Reese,” he said slowly. “I thought—I’m sorry, I thought that was common knowledge.”
I let out a snort of embarrassed laughter. “I did know that.” I just hadn’t considered that it pertained to me, to us. Of course Vampires were only male. Everyone knew that. Mates could be either male or female, but there’d never been a female birth recorded. “Right. Slipped my mind for a minute.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why the hell would you be sorry?”
“I know some women would like to have girls—”
“Even if you were human, I wouldn’t know what I was getting until the deed was already done,” I pointed out. “I could’ve ended up with all boys anyway.”
“That’s true.”
“And we haven’t even decided if that’s something we’re planning to do,” I reminded him.
“Also true.”
“Your childhood sounded pretty idyllic,” I said, laying my head on his chest. “If we decide to have kids, we should shoot for that.”
“Your childhood wasn’t?” he asked, running his fingers up and down my back.
“I lived in forty-two foster homes,” I replied with a short laugh. “A couple were good. One was great. Most of them sucked. Didn’t matter, though. When my time was up, I was shipped off to the next one.”
His arm tightened around my back.
“My birth parents were the worst, though,” I said, tipping my head up to look at him. “And eventually, I met Rena. So, I guess it worked out in the end.”
We spoke long into the night about pretty much everything. I loved Thai food, but Beau’s favorite was Italian. He didn’t like wearing shoes and warned me that he was pretty much barefoot all summer, just like when he was a kid. I told him about the thrift stores that I liked to go to on the weekends, which stores were overpriced but worth it, and which ones were really cheap but didn’t have as much cool stuff. He informed me that his mother liked to go to the fancy estate sales that were invitation only, and he’d tell her I wanted to go with her next time. We discussed Rena and all of the harebrained ideas we’d gone through with over the years.