Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
“Hey, Aunt Sam!” Chloe cried with fake excitement.
“Chloe,” she said shortly, then turned her gaze back to Corey and opened her mouth.
His ex was not one to worry that a ten-year-old was standing there. When it came to her loathing of her ex-husband, and her need to express it, nothing stood in the way.
But Sam underestimated her opponent, and that opponent was not Corey.
Chloe took his hand, tugged and announced, “Mom and Dad are having pizza and ice cream for the team at our house. Come on. Those boys are gross and dirty, and they’ll eat all the pepperoni if we don’t get there first.” While tugging him toward his town car, she then yelled, “Mom! Dad! I’m going with Uncle Corey.”
He saw Genny nod, Tom’s failed attempt to hide a scowl, and last, Sam’s face get beet red that she’d been denied her opportunity to sink her claws into her ex-husband.
Allowing himself to be led, Corey looked beyond all of them to the field.
He caught Hale’s eyes on him.
He lifted his chin to his boy.
It was a familiar feeling, but even so, it nevertheless decimated him as he felt something die inside when Hale didn’t acknowledge his father’s attention.
He just turned and walked away.
Corey didn’t know it in that moment, and it would take over a decade for him to figure out why, but that was the last baseball game Hale would ever play.
Hale
Now…
“Are you going to open it?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“Hale—”
“Chloe, leave it.”
At her fiancé Judge’s murmured demand, Chloe shut her mouth.
And Hale, not for the first time, wondered why he hadn’t chucked the box his father left him after he’d committed suicide right in the trash.
Especially since every time Chloe set eyes on it, some version of this conversation would happen. And since Genny and Duncan had a place in LA, and Judge worked with Hale on the not-for-profit arm of Hale’s business, his de facto sister and her fiancé were in LA a lot.
So they had this conversation often.
And still, he hadn’t thrown that fucking box away.
“Do you want me to open it for you?” Chloe asked gently.
“Babe, leave it,” Judge whispered, a thread of harshness in his words.
Chloe shut up again, not because she was a woman who let a man tell her what to do.
No, it was because she loved two men who both lost parents in ugly ways.
Judge and Hale shared something hideous. Chloe had no idea. She had two loving parents who thought the world of her, were always there for her, and who she knew to her bones she could count on.
Hale avoided her eyes.
Chloe was worried and she wasn’t the kind of woman to hide her feelings, especially when she was feeling something for someone she loved.
And Chloe and her family were the only real family Hale had ever had, he loved her too, all of them, and he didn’t want her to worry at all, but especially not for him.
He should just let her open the box.
But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t open it. He couldn’t throw it away.
It was just there, in the living room of the house his father left to him, along with his company, his many other properties, and his billions. That box was now like a small art installation, it’d been sitting on that shelf for so long.
As far as he was concerned, it could stay there until Chloe’s children inherited it, because Hale didn’t intend on having any kids, nor did he intend to get married. He wasn’t about to repeat the sins of his father. And he was going to leave Chloe the house when—sometime he hoped was a long time from now—he died, not only because Hale knew she loved that house, but because he knew his father would want her to have it.
She’d been Corey Szabo’s favorite.
It wasn’t obvious.
But to his son, it still totally was.
On that thought, abruptly, he stood.
Chloe started and her face grew a little pale.
Judge tensed.
“I have a flight to New York to catch,” he announced.
Chloe looked at her watch, saying, “Yes, in two hours.” She turned her gaze to him, and quickly went on, “We were going out to lunch. And by the by, you own the plane, mon frère. You can leave whenever you like.”
“It’ll be best if I—” Hale started.
“I won’t mention the box again,” she promised.
“Ever,” Judge put in.
She pressed her lips together, not willing to go that far.
At that, Hale smiled.
Hale didn’t have any favorites in the Pierce family. The sisters and brother Tom and Genny had given him, the parents they tried to be, they all held equal places in his heart.
In fact, they took up the whole of it.
“Right, then, let’s go to lunch,” he said. “But I should get to the airport sooner rather than later. I’ve got shit to do, and I don’t want to be landing at midnight.”