Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 174544 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174544 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
“Yeah?” I lift my pen off the paper.
“There’s a plastic tub in my closet. Will you take it sometime today? It’s yours.”
I frown. “What is it?” My chest tightens, already having an idea.
“My fics. The printed ones.”
“The only ones you have left,” I say the unspoken thing.
“Yeah.” She sits up off me. “I want you to have them.” Her eyes are earnest but a little scared.
I start to shake my head. “Luna—”
“You’ve read more of my stories than anyone else. Maybe even more than Charlie. He doesn’t reread them like you do, I don’t think. I just thought…you’d want them, since I have no use for them anymore.”
“I do want them,” I say strongly. “But you might change your mind. You might even want to republish them one day.”
She seems doubtful. Her face keeps falling.
“I’m borrowing them then,” I say. “I’m giving them back when you’re ready.”
“What if I’m never ready for anyone to read them again?” she asks quietly.
“Then I’ll be your only reader, and that’s alright.” I want to say more, but my phone buzzes. She looks away from me quickly. My chest contracts while I reach for my phone.
I scan the message.
“Shit, I gotta go.” I hop off the bed. “Boss just texted. I’m on your brother’s detail.”
“Xander?”
“Older brother,” I correct. “Maximoff has to go into Hale Co. offices for some charity thing, and Farrow is tied up with the med team.” She looks a little sad, but before I go, I lean over the bed and kiss her. “Call me if you end up leaving the penthouse. I’ll walk Orion before I head out.”
She nods. “Thanks, Donnelly.”
This is the part I’m starting to really hate. It’s where I linger in the doorway, where she smiles back but an excruciating yearning burrows beneath her expression, and my heart concaves.
“There’ll be tomorrow,” I say.
Hope tries to fill her eyes, and the only regret I have is not making that a promise. The kind of promise on her planet. Tongue to tongue.
It’s all I think about as I truly leave.
18
LUNA HALE
Sex with Donnelly this morning is a ginormous mental distraction for the rest of the day. I catch myself lost in the blissful memory of him and me, hot and sweaty together. I’m clinging to the minutes and seconds I spent with him, replaying the event so it’ll be carved permanently in my head.
Fantasizing this deeply isn’t such a problem, not when I’m alone. However, I am now among other humans.
I tune back into my cousins.
“Okay, fucking here me out, camping but themed. We could do emo, pirates, fucking space aliens—whatever you want, Luna,” Sulli says to the group, which is just me and Jane and teeny tiny Baby Maeve.
Jane and Thatcher renovated their spacious closet into a woodland fairytale nursery, complete with framed paintings of classics like Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood. Behind the bassinet is a bright mural of a castle hidden in a mushroom thicket. It’s cozy and perfect for Jane’s new little princess.
While Jane is on the plush rocking chair, nursing Maeve, Sulli and I are on a Tiffany blue loveseat, busy entertaining the cats. Thatcher has a rule about not allowing the cats in the nursery, but Jane has amended it to add, “Without supervision.”
I’m unsure if he knows this or not, but at the moment, Sulli and I have dubbed ourselves the World’s Mightiest Cat-Sitters. I ensure Ophelia doesn’t bother Jane with pets, and Sulli keeps rattling a BB8 cat toy to distract Carpenter from inspecting Baby Maeve.
“Should Jane be camping?” I ask since she hasn’t been home from the hospital for long.
She’s only a week or so post-partum, and even though she has a glow to her freckled cheeks and maintains her natural upbeat energy, she still just birthed a human being. Sleepless nights with a newborn haven’t just been on the horizon. She said, they exist.
I wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at her.
Donnelly and I think she’s powered by Cobalt fuel. It’s inexhaustible stuff. But strangely enough, Thatcher is wired the same way. He acts fine with only a few hours of sleep.
I’d be an exhausted roly-poly wanting to curl into myself. I’m powered by Hale fumes. Running on empty. But maybe it’s potent stuff too. Just in a different way.
“I can camp,” Jane says brightly, eyes widening and alight. “We can play charades around the campfire. Or truth or dare. Never have I ever.” Jane loves group activities, and I guess that wouldn’t change with a baby.
“Oh fuck charades.” Sulli loves the actual wilderness. “Last time we played was fucking awful.”
Jane smiles with the tip of her head, glancing briefly at Maeve in a blue sling against her chest. “You were the one who decided to announce your relationship via charades. It’s not ruined.”
“It is tainted.”
“I refuse to believe so. Charades are a staple.”