Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
This.
This was what I had been missing for so long without even realizing.
A part of me had been convinced that I had become cold because of the life I had led. I was starting to see now, though, that this wasn't the case.
No.
I had turned cold because I was deprived of the warmth of my family, of this town I loved so much, of these connections, these stories, this bottomless source of love and support.
No one was looking at me as though I was some kind of monster.
No one was condemning me for the life I had led.
They were just accepting it as part of me.
And that was the beautiful thing about this place, this town, this club.
They didn't judge you for your past, for all the ugly things you thought were so unlovable. They just welcomed you in with open arms, compared scars with you, let you know that we'd all been broken and lost along our way at some point, that it didn't make us hard to love. It just gave us some really good fucking stories.
"I don't think we have formally met," Lou said, offering me her hand.
From the stories I'd heard, she and Uncle Adler had met right around the time I had been taken.
"I think we are going to get along really well," I told her. "Can you tell me some other times Uncle Adler has made an idiot of himself?" I asked, giving him a sugar-sweet smile as he clutched his chest as if I'd wounded him.
"After all the hours I spent teaching yer ungrateful arse to fight..." he said, shaking his head.
I spent the rest of the night mostly regaling my uncles with my own personal war stories, never before feeling quite so much like I belonged as I did then, hearing them compare mine with theirs, praising me when I told them how I'd gotten out of a dicey situation, watching their eyes get warm when I reminded them that I had learned certain important moves from them.
"Here, Ace," Vance said some time later after most people had headed home. Save for my parents who still hadn't come out of their room and West who was passed out on the couch. "Saved you some of this," he told me, holding out a napkin folded over something rectangular. "That's the biggest slice I could snag. Everyone was like starving fucking animals around that shit," he added, shaking his head as I unwrapped the banana bread slice.
"Thank you."
"Ace?"
"Yeah?"
"They don't fucking care," he told me, making my gaze find his. "They know what you've been up to. And they don't fucking care. You see the crazy amount of love you have here now, right?"
Even just mentioning it made that warm feeling fill me up once more.
"I do."
"Good. Now go get your ass on your bike."
"On my bike?"
"We're going back to the apartment. Can't fuck you with your parents right down the hall now that they know."
"Oh, my virgin ears!" West declared, putting his hands over them, making a chuckle move through Vance.
"Virgin, huh? Then all those girls who have spent the night here..."
"They were my tutors," he told us, smirking.
"Oh yeah? What are they teaching you?"
"Don't ask him that," I hissed, shaking my head at the wicked look West had on his face.
"Still haven't mastered that, man?" Vance asked, tsking.
"Hey, what can I say, I like the practice. Though now that you stole my fucking wingman, I will probably be out of commission for a while. Thank fuck I am heading to the new compound this summer."
"Wait... what?" I asked Vance as West disappeared. "The new compound? This place has been in the family for ages."
"New compound. For the new chapter," Vance told me. "In Florida," he added, clearly thinking this would have come up before now. "That was why your parents caught their cruise out of Florida instead of here. Your father wanted to check shit out. West is going to head down there to set shit up. Bit of an info dump on you, huh?" he asked when I couldn't seem to make any single thought stick.
"But... who? Why..."
"Think that is a story for another day, Ace. Let's go home."
"Oh, God," I grumbled.
"What?"
"Don't call that place home," I insisted, face screwing up.
"Fine. Let's go to our clandestine fuck pad."
"That's better," I agreed, smiling.
And fuck we did.
On every surface.
Until the sun damn near came up.
"Hey," Vance said, slapping my ass, making me grumble.
"I'm not moving," I declared, body composed entirely of Jell-O.
"Can I play something for you?" he asked, making my head turn to find him holding a guitar that had been stashed in the back of the closet.
"You wrote something?" I asked, pushing up, too interested to care about the objections of my tired body.
"Wrote you something," he clarified.
And just like that, every single girlhood dream I had of Vance came true.