Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
I was acutely aware of Keegan’s feelings in all this, but it wasn’t what Lucas thought.
Not anymore.
“I’ll say goodbye to Cassie so you can spend time with her today while I’m attending my meeting.” He rose and headed off, leaving Mère and me together.
I could read her expression so easily as she sipped her tea.
“What?” I asked.
“I wasn’t going to say a thing,” she said, slightly singing the words as though she were keeping some great secret.
“Mère, I could use some encouragement.”
She reached across the table and took my hand. “He’s coming around, Owen. It’ll take some time, but he needs you to be here for him right now. He’s always needed you to balance him out a little bit.”
“Not sure I’m interested in balancing out someone who’s a…jerk,” I said, referring to Keegan’s use of the term earlier to cloak the far worse word I had racing through my mind.
“It’s a hard job your brother has taken on,” Mère added. “I know too well from being by your mother’s side that it’s easy to lose your way, and he needs more friends, not fewer, more people to stand by him when he’s being an ass than not.”
“I’ll do my best to take your point to heart, but I don’t have to like the fact that he’s being an ass.”
“Hee, hee, they said ‘ass,’” I heard Cassie whisper behind a hedge, and Mère and I glanced to one another, smiling.
“At the least, we’re doing a good job corrupting the youth,” Mère said. “Are you enjoying corrupting the youth?”
I laughed out loud. “Definitely more fun than I thought it would be.”
“Good, because what is life if you can’t have a little fun with it?”
She winked as she squeezed my hand. “Life is short, O. Enjoy yourself.”
Words to take to heart.
23
Keegan
After Owen’s brother left, Sharon and Cassie headed off to watch a movie together, and Owen gave me the official palace tour, guiding me through various libraries and courtyards. Hall after hall, we went on what was quite a trek before we reached a series of paintings—portraits of what Owen said were the previous members of the royal family. When we reached the ones of his immediate family, including his, I couldn’t help remarking, “You should have had this sexy facial hair when they painted this.”
He laughed. “I didn’t start sporting this sexy look until my mid-twenties.” He turned back to the portraits. “Considering Mère’s part in our family, it’s hard to look at these and know she’ll never have the honor of being up here, where she belongs.”
I took his hand.
“She made everything that much easier. Helped us have moments where we felt like we were in a normal family. Even with the royal guard hounding us around breakfast, at least it felt like a regular meal, like we could set aside all the other stuff.”
He turned to the portrait of his mom. I could see the warmth in his expression, his appreciation of his mother in the way he beheld her.
I didn’t want to pull him from his thoughts, but his expression elicited the question, “Everything okay?”
He shook his head, turning to me. “I was just thinking that Mother wouldn’t be very proud if she was looking down and seeing the way Lucas and I were acting toward one another. We haven’t really communicated in a very long time.”
“I doubt I’m helping anything in that department,” I said. “But he’s not the worst. Based on what you’d said before I got here, I had this impression in my head of this total d-bag who was just going to be mean and an ass to me.”
“He seemed to be that plenty enough for my tastes.”
“But he’s not, really. He’s clearly a caring father to Cassie, and even though he wasn’t the friendliest, he got to laughing at some of my dumb jokes.”
“Your jokes are never dumb.”
I glared at him.
“Okay, well, on occasion, but adorably so.”
“And I can tell he cares about you.”
“That’s harder to believe.”
“O, he’s your brother. Jace and I don’t always get along about stuff, but I know he has my back no matter what.”
Owen shook his head. “It’s not the same, Keegan. If ever someone has not been there for me, it’s been Lucas. When Mother passed, the entire family had a difficult time. Lucas and I, we’d spent so much of our lives being taught to be strong for the people that we both felt we had let them down through our intense weakness. Lucas managed to find his way, but I couldn’t function, couldn’t handle the pain, and it was what led me to finding…other ways of coping. Of course, when I wound up in rehab, he came to visit me. And he didn’t care about what I was enduring or my suffering. He was more concerned with how I’d shamed our family. And that destroyed me. That was the day our sense of family died. The day I realized my own brother had abandoned me.”