Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
With me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I NEVER LIKED my room growing up.
Because it was on the first floor. It had several giant windows overlooking the garden in the back and a set of French doors leading outside. I thought all of this made it, and thereby me, extremely accessible. To all sorts of danger. Mostly my father, but still. I wanted a smaller room, with maybe one window and one door that I could bar with a dresser or something equally heavy. And I wanted it tucked away somewhere, maybe on the third or fourth floor, where no one would bother passing by or coming to see me.
I’m reevaluating that now because I think my room is gorgeous. It’s spacious and airy. It has white walls and cream curtains, billowing with the summer breeze. There isn’t anything blue in it, but that’s okay. I think I could come to like white if I gave it a chance. And the best part is that I can walk outside and get all the air I want because for some reason, ever since I got back to Wildfire at dawn today, I haven’t been able to breathe properly. Despite the room being so airy, I mean.
So that’s where I am. Outside, looking over the ranch I hated living on. The rolling fields, the mountains in the distance. The rows of barns and a stable, bunkhouses. All shining silver in the moonlight. I’m also trying to look beyond that, but I won’t go into it right now or ever. As in, what I’m looking for and why. But the point is I’m okay. I will be okay. I can’t breathe right now and I have a little PTSD about living on this ranch, but it will get better. I know it.
Just then I hear footsteps and turn around to find my brother rounding the corner and walking toward me. In a very rare turn of events, he’s wearing a pair of cotton pajamas and a T-shirt as opposed to what he normally wears, a bespoke suit complete with a tie and polished boots, just like our father. But then again, it’s approaching midnight and I bet he doesn’t sleep in those suits, no matter the impossible image I’ve created in my head over the years. Where both my dad and my brother are superhuman villains or monsters who don’t need sleep.
He comes to stand beside me, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I say, wrapping my arms around my waist. “Can’t sleep?”
He stares at the horizon, much like me, his jaw tense and shakes his head. “Not really.”
“Is it all the excitement of me being back home?” I quip, trying to lighten the mood. But also because it’s true. In the sense that my brother has always wanted me to come visit from college. Ever since he got back from abroad a few years ago, where he remained for the better part of the last decade either studying or handling Turner business on the international front, Breck has been constantly calling me, texting and emailing, wanting for us to meet up. I always assumed it was another way my father was trying to control me, putting Breck on my back. So I kept dodging my brother’s calls and any attempt at making contact. But as it turns out, they were genuine, those attempts. He simply wanted me to come home and for us to have a relationship.
My joke makes his mouth twitch, and an ache emerges in my chest. Because it seems familiar, the urge to smile but not knowing how. Someone else does that too. Someone I’m determined not to think about. Not right now at least.
“Yeah,” my brother says, and I focus on him. “And the fact that you should’ve been here sooner.”
This time, the ache in my chest is different as I say, “You didn’t know.”
His chest moves with a sharp breath. “I should’ve tried harder to find out.”
That’s familiar, too, his angry words, directed at himself. Someone else also has a habit of taking too much blame on himself, as unwarranted as it may be. But since I’ve decided not to think about that certain someone, I keep my thoughts contained to my brother’s self-blame. Which is also unwarranted.
So again, turns out there was a reason why my brother kept trying to make contact with me these past few years. It’s because he started to realize what a piece of shit our father was. It began with business and all the bad decisions our father had made over the years, running everything into the ground. Apparently, the Turner empire is struggling, and Breck has had to find ways to salvage what’s left of what was going to be his legacy. But it’s been difficult because at every turn, he’s had to contend with our father’s lying and cheating. Not to mention his enemies, loan sharks, people he’s pissed off over the years, all crawling out of one hole or another, breathing down my brother’s neck. I mean, I can’t even imagine. I don’t know much about the business, but the evidence I saw in Mars’s office that I was going to use to hopefully get my and my mom’s freedom told me enough to know that whatever our father’s been involved in is really bad.