Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 67465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“She’s going to be so angry. She’ll think you set out to seduce me and failed, and I seduced you because you…uh…because of before.”
Her lips quirk, and my god, is there a limit to how much grace this woman is willing to extend to me? “Let me handle the talk with Kimmy. I know my own mind, and she knows that about me. I also know her, and I know she’s always missed you, and she loves you. We’ll get it figured out.”
“I’m having dinner with my mom tomorrow,” I blurt out, so close on the heels of what she just said, but I have to tell her. “We’re going to talk through everything, I hope, but I don’t know how much she’ll tell me about anything. Maybe everything? Maybe nothing? If it’s nothing, then I hope that one day, she’ll open up. It would give me….”
“A certain measure of peace?”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “A certain measure of peace. Maybe…maybe after we talk, we can have dinner with Kimmy—the three of us. Maybe with Nanny too. Then we can tell them what really happened. All the shame and secrecy and hopes that my dad would one day forgive my mom and ask me to come back home—all of it is buried with him now. Maybe we can have a new beginning.”
Remi’s sea-blue eyes fill with tears. She’s the ocean, calm and cool against all the scathing, fiery emotions always whirring inside me. She makes them settle. She makes me feel at peace.
“A new beginning. I like that. For all of us. I’ll talk to Kimmy tomorrow or Sunday, and I’ll text you after. Then, we can figure out when and what our date night will be. And where. Although for the where, can I be obscenely boring and make date night be helping me build the deck at Nanny’s? I know between your mom, Nanny, Kimmy, and me, the flower gardens were planted, but I know the rest is a lot for you to take on all by yourself.”
“Good liver and onions gravy, Remi. I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes.” She swivels on top of me, knocking me onto my back. She leans over me, and I’m framed by a curtain of her hair. “You do.”
CHAPTER 15
Remi
“That bastard! That scheming, wretched, horrible, plotting bastard!”
I shift quite uncomfortably. Kimmy doesn’t know, and I hate that she’s using that word. It’s a token enough curse word, but I would far rather she be more inventive.
“That slithering, lying, duck-faced, platypus-assed….” She heaves out a long, angry breath like a dragon snorting steam. I wonder what any platypus ever did to her. They’re adorable. That’s not an insult. “I knew this would happen!” It’s a little bit awkward that Kimmy bangs her fist down on the table because we’re seated in the middle of her favorite restaurant, getting cheesecake at seven at night. Seven at night on a Sunday shouldn’t be a hot time for dessert, but Kimmy knows all the best spots, and the little diner with the cheerful blue booths and ceiling tiles made of hammered bronze or copper or whatever that I’ve always loved so much, is fully packed.
“Whoa.” I raise both my hands and then point at her cheesecake. “Firstly, you did not. Secondly, eat. You’ll feel better. Cheesecake makes everything better.”
“Is that why you suggested this place?” Kimmy picks up her fork, looking no less murderous. She stabs the cheesecake, though, and that’s all.
“Of course. A little sweetness to combat the mountain of bitterness I knew was coming.” I wait until she gets a few bites down before I even attempt to turn things toward a more civil conversation. “There are things you don’t know about. Things that happened. Van left for a reason, and it had nothing to do with you. He had to stay away for reasons that also had nothing to do with you. He missed you. A lot. The fact that you both aren’t on speaking terms has torn a massive hole through his heart.”
“His black, horrible heart.”
“No. He has a good heart.”
“He doesn’t,” Kimmy grumbles, but there’s less fire in her voice. She won’t look up at me, and I know it’s because she doesn’t want me to see the tiny, desperate speck of hope in her eyes. I know it’s there. I know it’s always been there. My heart pinches and aches.
“He doesn’t want the company.”
“He does,” Kimmy insists stubbornly.
“The will was fake, Kimmy.”
Her neck snaps up at that, and her fork goes flying over her shoulder as her hand jerks involuntarily. I wince, and she whips around, covering her mouth with both hands. A not-so-happy-looking two hundred and something pound burly dude who looks like he eats metal bars for late-night dessert instead of this place’s famous cheesecake whirls around in his seat. His glower could freeze the hottest fires of hell, and he makes me realize there’s such a word as gruntled because he looks so disgruntled. He’s maybe in his thirties, and if he weren’t snarling like a raging beast, he’d probably be quite handsome.