Total pages in book: 10
Estimated words: 9662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 48(@200wpm)___ 39(@250wpm)___ 32(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 9662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 48(@200wpm)___ 39(@250wpm)___ 32(@300wpm)
After all of these years, I'm finally going home. Bleak though it may be, I am determined to make it home again.
"Welcome home, son," my dad says, hugging me in the middle of the airport. Being back in Alaska is bittersweet. We haven't seen much of each other, the Daniels clan, and we are all to blame on that front, but I could have made an effort. Once I was drafted, I never looked back, and I knew that was wrong of me.
"Thanks, Pop. Where's Mom?" I ask, knowing that not much could keep her from being here. She's my biggest fan. We're waiting by the conveyor belt for my bags. The rest of my things are being shipped, but they couldn't give me a realistic time frame for when they will arrive, so I brought the essentials myself.
"Cherry is in labor," he says. That'll do it. Mom never leaves her side when she's giving birth. Cherry is having her seventh, God, possibly eighth child, and I've never met any of them. They are all home births and all in Torque. I've prayed my ass off every time she goes into labor because there is no hospital nearby. The closest one is here in Anchorage. If something were to go wrong, it would be catastrophic. Her husband, Clint, the only other person to graduate from Torque School, class of 2000, hates this. He'd much prefer her to go to town to have the kids, but she wants to do it the way women in Torque have done it since the 1800s, and how can you argue with that? I haven't met any of my brother's children either. God, I am the worst uncle on the planet. There's no time like the present to remedy that shit.
"Gotcha. We should go home," I tell him, grabbing my bags off of the belt.
"What about your fancy townhouse?" he asks, reminding me that the team has gotten me a fully furnished place in the suburbs. The only perk is that it has a private gym because I hate working out with others. The guys on the Wildcats said that it's my one quirk, my diva thing. Whatever, I like to work out alone. I don't need anyone critiquing me or giving me shit while I get shit done.
"I can get settled in later. I want to be there for my family." I wasn't able to do it before, but things are going to change now that I'm home.
It honestly feels like everything is about to change for me, and I want that.
two
Esther Holland
I'm so damn bored; I could cry, I think, as flop back on the bed I've had ever since I stopped using a crib. I'm taller than the twin-sized lumpy mattress. I feel like I haven't had a decent night's sleep since my last growth spurt seven years ago. I'm not one to complain out loud, though. My Pops, Darren, is a hard-working man who is putting me through college so that I can go to nursing school. He doesn't think I should be working. Instead, he thinks I should focus all of my time and energy on school and my apprenticeship; my mother is a self-serving bitch.
Rita Swisher.
She left town a month after I was born. Pops met her at a bar in Anchorage. She didn't tell him that she was already married with two other children down in Washington State. For a year, she was in Alaska to set up a new branch of her family's company, Swisher Toys. She had an affair, got pregnant with me, and left me with my father when it was time to go back home. She paid child support faithfully and even sent me a little extra. I put it in the bank. I don't want anything to do with the woman. I am a hundred percent sure she never told her husband or my half-siblings about her wild Alaskan indiscretion. My poor Pops has never trusted a woman again. Can you blame him, though? Whenever she's in Anchorage, she tries to see me, but I can't. Maybe one day, but not now. I don't like it, but I can understand how you can fall into bed with someone who isn't your husband as a one-time thing after a few drinks, but that's not what happened here. She put on a huge front that lasted until a month after I was born. My father even went so far as to propose to her, which she accepted. She never said a word to him until it was time to go home. I also can't understand leaving your child behind. No matter what the situation was, I digress. All I've ever wanted was for my father to find love, but he doesn't even try anymore. When I was younger, I tried to set him with my teacher, doctor, and anyone I thought was single, but it never worked.