Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Leaning over just a little, I peeked around the toilet and saw it again.
Two little eyes.
One bare tail.
About two inches long.
It darted off, disappearing around the trash can.
I wasn’t proud of myself . . . but I screamed. Not loud, but it was still a scream.
And then I got the hell out of there.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever moved so fast going down the hall, thankful I’d seen him after I’d pulled my pants on and zipped them up, going as far away from the bathroom as possible.
Which ended up being the kitchen.
Rhodes was standing by the island, tearing paper towels off when he noticed me coming. A frown came over his face. “What’s—”
“There’s a mouse in the bathroom!” I squeaked and went past him, pretty much leaping onto the stool beside the counter, then jumping from there to the back of the couch with a frantic look toward the floor to make sure I hadn’t been followed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Amos stood up so fast the chair he was in fell backward, and the next thing I knew, he’d leaped onto the couch and ended up beside me, his butt propped up on the back of it, legs dangling inches off the floor in the air. Johnny and Jackie either didn’t care or were so stunned by Amos and me that they hadn’t moved a single inch from the table.
“A rat?” Rhodes asked from the exact same spot he’d been in.
I shook my head at him, exhaling hard to try and bring my heart rate down. “No, a mouse.”
His eyebrows crept up about a half-inch, but I noticed it. “You’re screaming because of a mouse?” Did he have to ask so slowly?
I swallowed. “Yes!”
He blinked. Beside me, Amos suddenly snorted deep in his throat like he hadn’t knocked his chair over. Then I noticed that Rhodes’s chest was shaking.
“What?” I asked, eyeing the floor again.
His chest was shaking even more, and he barely managed to wheeze out, both eyes squeezing closed, “I . . . I didn’t know you were into parkour.”
Amos snorted again, lowering his legs and planting his feet.
“You backflipped onto the table . . .” Rhodes choked out.
He was wheezing. The son of a bitch was wheezing.
“No, I did not!” I argued, starting to feel just a little bit . . . foolish. I hadn’t. I didn’t know how to backflip.
“You jumped from the island to the couch,” Rhodes kept going, raising a fist to hold it right in front of his nose.
He could barely talk.
“Your face . . . Ora, it was so white,” Am started, bottom lip starting to tremble.
I pressed my lips together and stared at my favorite traitor. “My soul left my body for a second, Am. And you didn’t exactly walk over here either, okay?”
Rhodes, who decided that this was what he was going to find hilarious, barely choked out, “You looked like you saw a ghost.”
Amos burst out laughing.
Then Rhodes burst out laughing.
One quick glance confirmed that Johnny was chuckling too. Jackie was the only one giving me a smile. I was glad someone had a heart.
They were cracking up, totally and completely cracking up.
“You know, I hope it crawls into one of your mouths for being so mean to me,” I muttered, joking. Mostly.
Rhodes grinned so wide, he came over and slapped his son on the back while they both kept laughing.
At me.
But together.
And maybe I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight now, worried there might be a mouse next door, but it would be worth it.
Chapter Eighteen
I was sitting at the table reading when I heard the familiar crunch of tires on the driveway.
I perked up.
Amos had mentioned last night while we’d discussed how many rhyming words were too many rhyming words in a song, that his grandfather, Rhodes’s dad, was coming over to spend the weekend. I’d forgotten all about Jackie bringing it up at his birthday dinner. The brand-new sixteen-year-old had claimed he was thinking about acting sick so he could have an excuse to hide in his room.
The thing was, I hadn’t realized until then that no one really brought up Rhodes’s parents. Amos mentioned his other four grandparents in bits and pieces from time to time, but that was it. I doubted that my own nephews ever talked about me, so I tried not to think it was too strange . . . but it was strange.
Or at least I had a feeling there was something there, especially after Am told me that Rhodes’s dad lived in Durango, which was only about an hour away. I’d been with them for months now. Shouldn’t he have come over already? Rhodes and Am both rarely left the house together. Maybe part of it was because he was still grounded, but the strictest part of it was over, I was pretty sure. But it was still off to me.