Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 20927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 105(@200wpm)___ 84(@250wpm)___ 70(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 105(@200wpm)___ 84(@250wpm)___ 70(@300wpm)
I continue sorting through the mail, not bothering to look up. It’s been two days since Piper left. I think it’s been two days. It’s felt more like ten years. Every breath hurts and all I want is her back in my arms.
“Come into the kitchen,” she says.
“Not hungry.” I’m existing now, a shell of myself. I keep saying that I’ll feel better tomorrow but deep in my gut, I already know the truth. I’ll never feel the same again. Piper was it for me.
“I said come into the kitchen.” Her tone tells me she’s not leaving me alone until I do what she says.
I grumble under my breath and toss the mail onto my desk. I can finish that later. If I remember to. I’m not sleeping at night and my memory is becoming crap.
I follow Iris into the kitchen the staff uses to prepare the food. There’s a wooden table in the corner where the staff will stop and eat as time allows. But instead of staff members sitting around the table, my three sisters are here. As soon as I see them, I turn around. But she snags me by the shirt. “Sit. Down.”
I scowl and move to the kitchen table, taking the empty spot next to Ava. She’s the youngest and I’ve always been close to her. “This feels like an intervention.”
“Good!” Iris claps her hands together. “Then you know where this is going.”
I fight a wave of dread. My sisters are happily married. They believe in love and fairytales and all of that stuff. I’m happy for them. I want them to have the best in life and that means I worked damn hard over the years to keep them from feeling the brunt of my father’s absence. I was the one who taught Ava how to throw a softball and threatened Sophia’s prom date into being a gentleman. I taught Luna how to drive a stick shift and apply to college.
Sophia frowns at me. “Gray, what happened?”
“There was a girl,” Iris says before I can brush off my sisters’ concern and get back to work. “Gray liked her, and she liked him back.”
Ava gasps. “What happened?”
“He messed it up!” Iris really should have been a lawyer. “He sent her away.”
“I didn’t send her away. She left,” I defend, looking to Luna. She’s the oldest and the one who will understand. She was abandoned at the altar before she found her perfect match. I spent months picking up the pieces and helping her before she discovered the strength to start putting herself out there again. If her groom-to-be hadn’t skipped town, he’d have been in traction by the time I was done with him. No one makes my sisters cry.
“After you messed up!” Iris smacks her hand down on the table, always the one for the dramatics.
“All I did was cut my losses. We were never going to work.”
Ava runs a hand through her pixie cut hair. I taught her to throw a punch when she was in third grade because one of the boys wouldn’t leave her alone. I was probably more like a father to her than I was to Luna or Sophia. “Is this about Jane?”
“Who’s Jane?” Luna demands.
Fuck me, I got drunk with Ava one night and the whole sordid story with Jane came out. I never meant to tell anyone about it. “No one. She was just a bride that came to the lodge years ago.”
“He fell in love with her. Like head-over-heels, name-a-star-after-her type of love,” Ava explains. “She was planning her wedding but the entire time she was stringing along Gray and telling him she was having doubts about her upcoming marriage. So your brother here went all out and gave her the proposal of a lifetime and she laughed in his face, the bitch.”
“And you’re worried that will happen again.” Sophia nods, the bun on her head bobbing as she does. She runs a craft and yarn shop in downtown Sweetheart.
“Did you talk with her about any of this?” Luna presses.
I push away from the table and get to my feet. Talking about this isn’t doing me a damn bit of good. “I have a lodge to run.”
For the next few hours, I hide away in my office. I keep the door locked and wait until the sounds of the lodge have quieted before I finally breathe. That’s when there’s a knock on my door. “It’s me. Luna.”
I debate not answering, but I won’t hurt my sister’s feelings for the world. So I unlock the door. She passes me a mug of my favorite cinnamon coffee. “Can I come in?”
I grunt my acceptance and open the door. She did bring me caffeine after all.
Luna takes a seat on the couch across from my desk. She wraps herself in the blanket on the back, bringing back years of memories. She used to hang out in here when she was having an anxiety attack. She’d play music on her phone while I worked at the desk. “It always looks the same in here.”