Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Chapter 1
Sophie
Before I can even ring the bell, the door is thrown open, and Liam, my younger brother, rushes outside.
“Morry,” he mutters, his mouth full of something.
“What are you even eating?” I demand as I turn and watch him hurry down the walk to his car.
“Muffin,” he says and throws me a smile that all the girls tell me is charming and magnetic.
To me, it just looks like he’s about to get into trouble. Which is on-brand for Liam.
“Gotta go. See ya.” He waves, drops into his Mustang, and vrooms right out of the driveway and down the street, through the Alki neighborhood of Seattle.
Since the door is open, I walk inside and make a beeline for the kitchen.
Some of the parents of all of us cousins went in on buying this house and then renovated it to suit a bunch of late teens or early twenty-somethings.
My aunt Natalie has owned the house next door forever. And now that the family owns this house, too, the parents decided to take down the fence that separated the two properties and make it a sort of Montgomery cousin compound.
We’re just a regular bunch of west-coast Kennedys.
“What are you up to?” Hudson asks as he reaches for a coffee mug and pours himself a cup. His dark-blond hair is a wild mass of bedhead, and his blue eyes smile at me sleepily as he takes his first sip. “Is someone in trouble?”
“Just because one of us oldies shows up to say hi doesn’t always mean that someone is in trouble.”
“Not always,” he concedes. “Did you just miss me and couldn’t stay away any longer?”
I smirk and reach for my own mug. “Something like that.”
The truth is, I sometimes get lonely in my condo. I work from home, so I’m there by myself most of the time, and sometimes, I miss the chaos that is my family, so I swing by the compound to see what’s going on.
“How’s school going?” I ask him.
“It’s almost over, and it can’t come soon enough,” he says with a sigh, scratching the stubble on his cheek. “But it’s good. I like it.”
“Being an electrician was an excellent decision,” I inform him.
“Yeah, well, most of my friends thought it was stupid that I didn’t go to a university.” He sips again, then shrugs. “But I hated school, Soph. I wouldn’t have been good in a classroom, and I grew up in a construction family.”
“That you did.” I hold my mug out to clink his. Hud’s dad, Mark, and my dad own a construction company together. It’s in our blood.
“I can make a good living with this.”
“Absolutely, you can. I’m really proud of you, twerp.”
He grins. “Thanks. And you’re not so bad yourself.”
I laugh just as Abby walks in, yawning hugely. “Coffee,” she mutters. “Must have coffee.”
“We drank the last of it,” Hudson says and then smirks when Abby’s eyes narrow into slits. “But I’ll make more.”
“Coffee,” she repeats.
Yeah, this is just what I needed this morning.
“So, what are you up to?” Hudson asks as he fills the pot with water.
“I’m on my way to go for a run, actually, but I thought I’d swing by and see how you guys are doing in the new house.”
“The hot water heater stopped working,” Abby informs me. She’s collapsed on the table, her face buried in her arms. “Cold showers suck ass.”
“I fixed it,” Hudson reminds her.
“Yeah, but not before I had to take a cold shower.” She lifts her head and gazes at him hopefully. “Is it ready yet?”
“No.”
She collapses once more.
“The house is pretty epic,” Hudson says. “And the cousins’ night we’re gonna have here this weekend is going to be a blast, especially since we’ll be able to go back and forth between both houses.”
“The weather has been looking up,” I add. “So, we might not have to make the journey in the rain.”
“It’s spring,” Abby reminds us. “And Seattle. At least we’re not still stuck under ten feet of snow in Iceland.”
“You loved Iceland,” I remind my cousin. The entire family, all four thousand of us, descended on Iceland for Christmas. It was fabulous.
“I did, but I don’t want to live in that kind of snow.”
“It’s gonna snow?”
And now, I’ve seen the whole household as Zoey, the youngest of this bunch, joins us.
“No, we were talking about Iceland.”
“I think I want to move there,” Zoey says with a fanciful sigh and sits at the table next to Abby.
“Your dad would kill you,” Hudson says with a laugh. “No way Uncle Will wants his baby girl halfway around the world.”
“I’m a grown-up,” Zoey mumbles with a scowl. “And I need coffee.”
“It’s almost done,” Hudson replies.
“I should go.” I stand and set my empty mug in the dishwasher. “I have some filming to do after my run, but I wanted to swing by and say hi.”