Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
“Leo, I…” My throat tightens. “I didn’t steal her heart. I couldn’t even if I tried. She fucking loves you.”
“Didn’t stop me from thinking it.” He shrugs, but the tension in his shoulders has lifted. “I told you to bring her back. And you did. That’s all I needed.”
The simplicity of his statement, the trust he placed in me, adds a new layer to the bond between us.
In the quiet that follows, we sit side by side, passing the vodka and watching over her as she sleeps.
His admission not only reveals the strength of his feelings for her and her happiness but also our faith in each other.
No matter what happens, the three of us are bound by something stronger than circumstance and more powerful than the doubts and fears that might seek to divide us.
“This is fucking good.” He tips back the bottle, his throat moving with a deep swallow, and passes it to me. “Might be your best batch yet.”
“Thank you.” I take another drink, savoring the hints of cherry that Frankie inspired. “Thank you for waiting, for trusting me.”
His nod is slow, thoughtful. “How do you see this working? With all of us together?”
I consider his question, the complexities in it. “I don’t have the answers. But I know that what we have here, what’s left of our family, is stronger because she’s part of it. She needs us both as much as we need her.”
“And you’re okay with sharing…everything?”
“Everything.”
He looks back at her, then at me, a sense of resolve settling over him.
Our conversation meanders, questions about the journey, her fall into the lake, and how we’ll navigate the future. But underlying every word is our commitment to each other. We drink to that commitment, to the future, uncertain but faced together.
As she begins to stir beneath the blankets, our voices trail off. The way he stares at her, the longing in his eyes is unmistakable, a silent echo of my own feelings.
The sound of a delicate yawn drifts from the bed, followed by her drowsy voice. “Are you drinking without me?”
“She was craving spiked coffee,” I say, too low for her to hear. “Any beans left?”
He shakes his head, a small smile breaking through.
Rising to his feet, he sheds his clothes. Then, stark nude and unabashedly hard, he plucks the bottle from my hand, takes a mouthful, but doesn’t swallow.
With the confidence befitting a lion, he prowls across the room, climbs over her on the mattress, and pushes aside blankets, garments, everything in his way.
She gives him a sleepy smile and twines her arms around his neck.
He glides her legs around his hips and kisses her, letting the vodka trickle into her mouth. As she laughs and moans, he kisses her deeply and fucks her slowly just like that, one hand in her hair and the other stroking her sensual body.
I lean my head back against the wall, content to watch her sigh and writhe beneath him.
When they climax together, I don’t feel like an outsider. My heart is with them, brimming with our combined happiness. It reaffirms my belief that our lives will be like this forever.
The scent of the earth, overwhelming and pungent, invades my senses as I step out of the old pickup truck.
I paid a guy twice the truck’s value to borrow it for a couple of hours so that I could drive from one end of buttfuck nowhere to the other.
“Wow…okay.” Sirena joins me on the dirt driveway in a snow-frosted field, surrounded by mountains, untouched wilderness, and the icy waters of the Prince William Sound. “It’s pretty here.”
I hadn’t noticed.
The stillness is oppressive, broken only by the wind, which insists on smearing a fine mist across the lenses of my designer sunglasses.
The quaint little port town of Whittier, Alaska, isn’t a town. It’s a fourteen-story building on a harbor.
With a population of 250, nearly all its residents live under the same roof, which also contains the post office, church, laundromat, health clinic, and general store.
Evidently, one of the few residents who doesn’t live in the complex happens to be the person I’m looking for.
Alvis Duncan.
A name buried within the walls of my childhood home, hidden among flight logs, a piece of a puzzle I didn’t know I was assembling.
Sirena found him easy enough.
“That it?” I remove my shades and squint at a small airplane hangar perched on the edge of the field where the wilderness begins its reign.
“Yep.” She proceeds to the modest house beside it and knocks on the door.
My breath forms clouds in the cold air as I approach the hangar, its open doors beckoning me inside. The wind follows me in, passing through me like a frozen ghost, whispering tales of the past.
The day my parents died, their flight departed from the Whittier airstrip not far from here. I don’t know how Alvis Duncan is connected to that. He refused to tell us anything over the phone. The moment Sirena mentioned the flight logs, he disconnected the call.