Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 117494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
I ignored the way my question confused Shelly, considering our whole laughing fit, and the fact that Claudia and I looked nothing alike.
“Didn’t you come to get me?” she asked. “Where else would I be?”
“Shane said you were gone—like, away.”
“Right.” Claudia’s eyes narrowed, turning speculative. “Let’s talk about you and Mr. VP.” She came forward, linking our elbows and nudged me away from Shelly. “Excuse us for a minute,” she called back over her shoulder. “We sisters need to have a little heart to heart right about now.”
Shelly tracked us as we went back to the barn we’d just left, and when we got inside, the two bikers sitting there took one look at Claudia and left.
She grunted as they went, closing the door behind them. “Nice to see I’ve got a reputation around these parts.”
I unlinked our elbows and moved aside. “Don’t get pissy that they got smart.”
She huffed, rolling her eyes. “More like your man told everyone I was off-limits.”
I wasn’t going to argue with that. That sounded like something Shane would do. But he had not told me she was here. “Shane talked to you?”
She was looking in the rooms, making sure the ones with closed doors were empty inside. When she got to the kitchen, she turned back, doing the same on the other side of the hall. “Talk to me about what? Why don’t you tell me what Ghost would’ve talked to me about?” There was a bite to her voice.
“About me being here? That Mom asked me to come bring you back?”
She huffed. “Mom does not want me to come back. I guarantee that.”
“She was in tears—”
Claudia laughed, coming to stand in front of me and crossing her arms over her chest again. “She was not. Mom hustled you. We both saw how Ghost reacted to you at the bar that night, and trust me, we already knew. Ghost sent someone to ask questions about you all over town—like that would happen and neither of us would hear about it? You’re supposed to be the smart one. Mom didn’t send you after me. She sent you after Ghost. I was just the excuse.”
I opened my mouth.
Claudia fixed me with a look. “I can’t figure out why you came. Because of Ghost or because you didn’t want to stay in Friendly any longer? My guess? The latter, but now I’m hearing how you came here on the back of Ghost’s motorcycle and whose bed you were in last night, so maybe I’m the foolish one. You and Ghost, huh? He’s not a rebound type of guy. Not for you, not from Foley.”
Aw, snap.
Right there, with that last statement, I realized a few things.
One, Shane had pushed away some of the pain I’d been ignoring from Foley.
Two, my sister didn’t care one iota about why I was here.
And three, Claudia was still a bitch.
My walls had been lowered. Shane had done that, but they slammed back up now, and my sister saw the change come over me. She took a step back, her eyes speculative. Or maybe they were calculating.
“What crawled up your ass and got you twisted?” I asked. “You brought Foley up last time I saw you too, and you actually seemed to regret it. This time you brought him up on purpose. To hurt me?”
“Oh.” She laughed, mocking me, and started to walk in a circle.
I moved with her. I couldn’t help myself.
“You’re lying to yourself, Kali, if you think you actually came for me.”
“Who cares? I would’ve found you and tried to talk you into going back to Mom. She did ask me to come and get you.”
She shook her head. “You’re just running, like you always have. Tell me something, sister. Why the fuck did you stay with Foley? You knew before you married him that he was a cheater, and you stayed with him.”
“Like I was supposed to believe everything you told me?” I laughed right back at her, mirroring her mocking tone perfectly. “All you’ve done is take my stuff. My things. My cars. My friends.” We hadn’t gotten to that yet. “My boyfriends. My jobs—”
“You’re lying on that one. I only took one of your—”
“Two. You took two of my jobs.”
She frowned. “Which ones? I remember the school concession stand job, but—”
“Mrs. Bierreto’s ice cream shop.”
She stopped frowning. “Oh. Yeah. I told her you were lazy and had an eating disorder and would binge on all the ice cream.”
I ground to a halt, my mouth on the floor. “You told her that?”
She laughed. “She offered me the job instead, right on the spot. She had no clue I was telling her about myself. I binged on all the ice cream.”
“You’re confessing now that you have an eating disorder?”
“God, no. That’s a lie. I just really like dick, cigarettes, and booze. Right?” She shot me a dark look, starting our circling again. “Isn’t that all you think about me? You don’t think I actually care about you.”