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)
He was gone.
After working out the minute details with Ferryn, Chris, Lo, and the small team of Hailstorm men and women who decided this was a cause they were happy to pursue, Chris approached Ferryn with an idea.
Approach 34691.
See if Holden would be interested in being in charge of re-training the new team members. He'd done such a good job of working with Ferryn. And these Hailstorm men and women had made their lives of martial arts training, of working in the military, so they didn't need to be worked on like Ferryn had needed to be worked on, hardening her, making sure she was capable of taking lives.
Ferryn had been pretty sure that he wouldn't be interested, not even if he got to train these people at his place without any pressure. But Chris had been just insistent about asking him.
I was a little surprised to hear that Ferryn had no way to get in contact with Holden, that in all the years they had been working side-by-side that they never so much as exchanged cell phone numbers.
I couldn't begin, in fact, to understand the strange disconnect the two seemed to share. Almost nine years together and she didn't have any stories about him to share outside of training stories and war stories.
I'd asked Ferryn about it, and she'd seemed confused by what I meant. Like they were just distant work colleagues, not people who shared a life for the better part of a decade.
I'd suggested going to see him mainly out of curiosity. I mean how could you not feel almost fatherly toward a young runaway girl who depended on you to keep her alive? I wanted to see how they interacted so I could better understand the kind of relationship they shared.
So we had borrowed one of Hailstorm's SUVs, packed it down, and hit the road.
It was almost jarring as I rode passenger to realize that she had been so damn close the whole time she was away. I guess, in my mind, I had pictured her on the other side of the country, up in Canada, or somewhere else that was not so easily reached by just a simple road trip.
I wondered if her parents felt a swelling of resentment at that when they'd found out. To know that, had she been in the right headspace, she could have visited from time to time, could have let them see her face, let them know she was alright.
I knew that, as time was going on and they knew Ferryn was planning on sticking around, Summer was losing that fear she'd been carrying around that made her hesitant to be anything other than Mom Of The Year toward Ferryn. I'd even overheard her make a few cutting comments about selfishness and the importance of family that Ferryn took in stride because she was starting to understand what had happened to her after the basement ordeal.
Chris had started making her do therapy with one of Hailstorm's former shrinks. Because Chris was convinced—rightly so, we were all beginning to realize—that there was more trauma in Ferryn than we all realized. That she got away with it because she covered her hurt with hard, and that shell was hard to break through. But it was there. The more time any of us spent with her, the more we saw it.
The way she struggled with being grabbed, even when it was just one of the little kids.
The way she couldn't make herself go into the laundry room at her parents' house because it was in the basement.
The way she tossed and turned, cried out in her sleep.
It was there. And it was buried under years and years of trying to deny it, or trying to use it to fuel her to complete her missions.
The missions themselves had left damage she wasn't ready to admit to. The way she scrubbed at her skin until it was raw. The way she sat out in the rain for hours on end.
I was secretly glad that Chris had come up with the solution she had. I was sure it would do Ferryn some good not having to do everything on her own, to not have to be completely alone in the world.
I had no doubt she would continue to go on missions, that it would still be important to her. I would have to learn to not let that worry me. Or convince Reign to let me follow her whenever she went on one, so someone would always have her back.
"What?" Ferryn asked, turning back to me with drawn-together brows.
"Nothing. Just trying to picture you here," I said as we stood in the living room of Holden's house.
It was very masculine. All dark woods, dark old leather sofas, no curtains, no pictures on the walls, no carpets or toss pillows on the couches.