Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
She’d been waiting for it for a month.
She pulled the underwear out of the box, then grimaced. “Oh, these aren’t them.”
She then started to frantically wipe her hand on the box with a horrified look on her face. “There’s something sticky on them! Oh my god!”
Yet another gross gift.
Yay.
“Who the fuck took this anyway?” Keene tossed Hades a shop rag that he’d had in his back pocket. “I thought they were supposed to start refusing any gifts.”
“They are,” I grumbled. “But this one was delivered by the mail carrier.”
“Fuckin’ awesome.” Keene sighed.
Two Months Later
“If one more fuckin’ gift finds its way onto our bus, you’re all fuckin’ fired!” Keene yelled.
My sisters and I stared at him. “Keene, honey. You act like we can just stop taking mail. Not to mention, it was us who brought it in, not them. And you can’t fire us. We all equally own it.”
“What is it this time?”
Keene looked toward Hades. Hades now refused to open anything after what happened last time.
“I’m not opening it,” Keene complained.
“I swear I didn’t buy her anything this time.” Hades held up her hands.
That had happened the last time Keene opened one. Hades had purposefully bought the one thing she knew he’d hate. He had a thing about spiders after spending some time overseas, and now literally went anywhere they weren’t.
Then there was my sister, sending him a package that had fake spiders exploding from the box.
My sister was a dick like that.
“You open it,” he suggested.
I rolled my eyes at both of them and ripped open the box.
In the box was a note laid on top of something.
I read the note and felt my stomach turn.
“I want to pull this out of you when it’s full of your menstrual blood. With my teeth,” Keene read.
“That’s disgusting,” I griped, not bothering to look any further.
Keene took the box and threw it away.
I walked to my bunk and said, “I’m not opening anything anymore.”
And I didn’t.
But my admirer kept right on sending them anyway.
CHAPTER 1
Always fuck me good night.
-Wall Sign
CARISTONIA
Shit had hit the fan last night.
Literally.
Well, maybe not the fan. Maybe more literally, shit hit the mirrors.
That’d been what happened when violent men walk into a Fun House to find your sister—your pregnant sister—about to get the shit beaten out of her by a crazed sheriff.
A sheriff that, at one point in time, had an altercation with said sister’s mother, and had killed her, too.
My name is Caristonia.
Well, actually, my name is Caristonia Blue, but my siblings called me “Tony.” My fraternal twin, Hades Pearl, had dubbed me Tony when she’d been unable to say my name.
“What are you even doing right now?”
I looked over at said twin.
“I’m getting dressed,” I told her.
“You’re wearing a swim dress.” She eyed me up and down. “You have the body of a literal goddess, and you’re going to wear a swim dress to a water park?”
Well, when she put it like that, it made me sound like I was a prude.
And, I guess, I kind of was a prude.
I just didn’t see the point in wearing revealing clothing. There was absolutely nothing in the world wrong with that.
The “swim dress” was actually a tighter fitting cover up that I could wear into the water to cover my actual bathing suit. It’d been something I wore to every single family outing that’d been in the water for years.
It drove not only Hades, but all of my sisters nuts because according to them, I had the absolute perfect body.
Sadly for them, I was not a person that wore tight clothes, or revealing clothes at that. I was a girl that loved everything about men’s hoodies, men’s sweatpants, and practically anything that would swallow me up.
I spent too many of my working hours in tight clothes—being in the circus required a certain attire to allure and wow—that I didn’t want to wear them in my non-working hours, too.
“I’m wearing something that’s comfortable,” I disagreed. “And unfortunately, that is this.”
Before she could degrade me anymore, or point out that I looked hideous in it, there was a knock on our bus door.
You heard that right. Bus.
I shared a bus with my family. There used to be seven of us shoved in tight like sardines, but now there were only six of us.
And that was thanks to the man that was currently knocking on the bus’s door.
I yanked it open and beamed at Coffey, Simi’s man, and also the cook for our circus family.
“How’s my sister?” I asked the man instead of offering him a greeting.
The man, also known as my sister’s likely about-to-be fiancé, softened.
“She’s fine,” he answered. “She’s sleeping. I just thought I’d come down here and grab some of her stuff and move it into the RV.”
My sister and Coffey had a whirlwind relationship. Two months ago, they’d met in one of our show’s towns. Our show being the Singh Circus.