Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Lo stood silently, listening with tears falling down her face.
I made myself breathe in some calm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to unleash all of that on you.”
Lo opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her head dropped. She walked straight over and wrapped her arms around me.
Oh.
She held on tight as she whispered, “I’m so fucking terrified.”
I reached up, putting my arms around her as best I could.
“I’m scared someone will kill Mom and Dad,” she continued.
My hands flexed, holding her to me.
“I have nightmares that someone will find our house, and Roger will try to defend us because you know he will. But he’s not a fighter and he’ll get killed instead. And my baby girls…” Her voice broke.
I squeezed her as tightly as I could.
This was why I should’ve planned for this.
Why I should’ve run, no matter what Brett said.
That was all too late now. The only thing I had was regrets, and the only thing that could’ve stopped any of this terror from touching them was if I had left as soon as I legally could, if I had lived with no family, no friends, and no loved ones that he could take away from me.
I ached at just imagining that life.
“I’m so terrified of what could happen to them. If I’m taken. If I’m killed. If they’re…” She hiccupped through her tears. “I can’t go there. If I do, I will lose my shit in a way that I’ll never be able to unlose it. But Billie…” She pulled back, still holding onto me. “I am absolutely terrified of losing my sister.”
My hands trembled against her back. Her sister. Brett called Charlotte, Cynthia, and Luna my nieces.
My family.
I’d fought so hard from letting them in that last wall, but it was all for nothing now.
I loved them. They were my family.
Lo kept going, not knowing my train of thought, “I don’t want to imagine what your life has been like, and I’m saying that because I’ve done it. All of us have. Mom. Dad. Roger. You have to do what you have to do to get through this shit. I understand that, but don’t push to the point where something in you completely breaks and I lose my sister a whole different way. I’m not worried about some sick psycho trying to hurt you. You’re a survivor. You’re going to survive whatever comes at you, but you need to survive yourself too.”
I sucked in a rattling breath and whispered, “I just told you, I can’t fall into that dark ocean world. I won’t climb back out.”
She shook her head. “That’s bullshit. I’m obsessed with you. If you go, I go. And if I go, Roger comes. Then the girls. Howard. But Vicky will be the last, and she’ll hold out. She won’t go with us.”
A slight laugh escaped me. “You’re right. She’d find a boat.”
“Totally. She’d bring the Coast Guard to save all our asses.”
“She would.”
“See? If you go into that dark ocean, we’ll make sure you’d come back. And we didn’t even consider what Brett Broudou would do. Knowing him, he’d dive in under you to quickly make a raft so you never even touch the water.”
I barked out a laugh. “I don’t know about that.”
“Or he’d try to punch into a different dimension. Maybe a different ocean. A pink ocean.”
I shook my head. “You still call him Brett Broudou.”
She blinked at me. “I do?”
I nodded.
“Oh.” She finally let go of my arms, stepped away, and shrugged. “Well, I mean, a guy who slams your sister’s would-be kidnapper to the ground is kinda legend in my mind. He was kinda legend already.” Her eyes sharpened. “Don’t let him know I said that.”
She turned toward the hallway.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to do my sisterly duties and, you know, check out the place. I didn’t get the chance after the hospital.”
“You’re going to snoop.”
She raised her chin in the air. “Checking the place out. Snooping. It’s all the same. Now, you going to be okay while I’m gone or do I need to stay and make sure I’m a lifejacket for you?”
I grinned, some of the tension easing, but that ocean was still in me. I didn’t think it’d ever seep out. “No. I’m good. I need to work.”
“Okay. Have fun working!”
I’d just settled in when my phone buzzed next to me.
Brett: How’s the day?
Me: Good actually. Lo is snooping around your place.
Brett: Ask her to keep an eye out for a Mustangs jersey. I got that signed by Cutler Ryder, and after the move, I can’t find it.
I smiled. It was easier and easier for me to do that. Smiling. Grinning. I hadn’t done a ton of it before Brett.
Me: Will do. Is everything okay with the team? Why were you called in so early today?