Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 162947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 815(@200wpm)___ 652(@250wpm)___ 543(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 815(@200wpm)___ 652(@250wpm)___ 543(@300wpm)
“No, Momma.” My boy shakes his head and fights a little to pull away from my embrace. “I haven’t, promise.”
“Really?” I press my hands to his shoulders, not ready yet to give him up. I won’t ever be ready, even if I’ll have to share him. “Not even just a little bit.” Because I can’t trust him not to be completely honest, not where my feelings are concerned.
“My brain has just been thinking about it when it was busy with other things.”
My hands move with his shrug. “Oh, baby.”
“See?” he says, angling his gaze Roman’s way, who’d planted his ass on the grass to make way for my mothering following this clusterfuck of a revelation.
“Yeah, you worked it out all right.” One leg bent, his arm draped over his knee, he looks wiped out and still all kinds of happy. “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes.”
“Who?”
“He was a famous detective,” I say, pressing my lips to his head again, feeling some relief at Wilder’s scrunched-up face. A smile springs to Roman’s lips, and I find myself joining him. It’s a weird feeling. “In books, at least.”
“Oh. Cool. So do you live here now?” Wilder’s attention slides to the pixie house behind his father. “Do we have to move to Australia?”
“No!” both Roman and I say at the same time. Wilder’s eyes fly wide.
“You don’t have to move to Australia, bud,” Roman says.
“Nothing will change,” I add a little desperately. At least, not yet.
“But what happens if you do have to go back, and we get lost again?”
“That’s not going to happen,” Roman promises as he leans forward, capturing both Wilder’s gaze and his hands. “I will always be here for you from now on. For you and your mum.”
“You’re gonna live here? In the pixie house? Where will I sleep?”
“Well, I guess—”
“You’ll sleep in your bedroom.” Because nothing is changing. “Like you always have.”
“Yeah, but when Ethan visits his dad, he has a bedroom at his apartment.” Wilder’s attention swings my way, then back to Roman. “There’s nowhere for me to sleep at the pixie house.”
Roman’s gaze meets mine, his expression seeming to say, welp, I guess he’s not traumatised. And he might not be, but I am—this thing feels like a runaway freight train. One being driven by an overeager seven-year-old.
Roman opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. “No, Roman won’t be living here, honey. He’s just staying in the pixie house for a little while.”
“Until I get somewhere bigger,” he interjects. “Somewhere close by. These are the things we’ll figure out as we go.”
“Okay.” Wilder’s brows furrow.
“But I’m here now, nice and close by, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And, when it’s okay with your mum, we’ll be able to spend loads of time together.” Under your watchful eye, Roman’s fleeting look seems to say. I guess there are worse situations to be in because I will be close by when the pair get to know each other. There’s comfort in that.
“Cool.” My, our son gives a decisive nod. “I’ll ask her, and when she says yes, I’ll do this.” He makes a dramatic come here motion that can probably be seen from the space station. “I don’t have a phone,” he adds. “But I can wave at you from the porch.”
“Sure,” Roman answers, a little bemused by kid logic.
“Mom says I’m too little for a phone—”
“Because you are.” Without looking, I know he’s rolling his eyes.
“But I can wave at you from the porch because I can see you from there.”
“What, in there?” Roman gestures to the pixie house.
“Because of all the glass.” Wilder nods and points, like further clarification is necessary. “Mom watches you all the time.”
“Does she, now?”
The little shit nods earnestly as I interject. “That is so not true.”
“Yeah, it is,” the little traitor answers, aggrieved that I deny what is, essentially, the truth, but an inconvenient truth, dammit! “I’ve seen you out there drinking your coffee in the morning. And I saw you once after bedtime, too. It was dark, and she was drinking wine,” he adds with just a hint of judgment as he turns back to his father. “You can see pretty good in the nighttime because you have the lights on. You really ought to close the blinds. That’s what Mom says to me when I go to bed.”
“Good advice.” He turns those smouldering eyes my way, but I nope right out of the situation by glancing away.
“That’s not really—”
“Do you not have enough shirts?” Wilder asks, cutting my denials off.
“Shirts?” Roman repeats, all amused, still looking at me.
“That’s enough, Wilder.”
“But he never has a shirt on.”
“Wilder!” Good grief, give me a break, kid.
“I have a big laundry pile,” Roman answers with supreme mastery of his amusement. At least until Wilder’s attention is snagged when I shove my phone in his hand.
“Here, go play a game for a few minutes.” His eyes light up as he grabs it, his smile making me wonder briefly if this was his mastermind plan all along. Nah. “You can wipe the smile off your face now,” I grumble, looking anywhere but at Roman because he is far too delighted with this conversation—as delighted as I am embarrassed.