Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 157273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
She sent an imploring look my way, then snatched her backpack with both hands, ignored the zipper entirely, and strode the opposite direction from Anne, heading back toward the northeast side of the house.
“I am so sorry.” Hudson watched Juniper retreat around the corner of the porch.
“Please tell me you didn’t know . . .” I turned my head slowly to look up at him.
“I had no fucking clue.” Stunned was an expression I wasn’t used to seeing on him.
I reached for the box, and to my surprise, he gave it to me. “She actually ordered DNA tests.”
“I never even knew she was looking for her mother.” He wrung out the bottom of his T-shirt, and I averted my gaze at the first hint of skin.
“I can get you a towel.” I did a double take when I caught him staring at me in disbelief. “What? I can simultaneously ignore that you destroyed me as a teenager while having manners. It’s called adulthood.”
We locked eyes, and I fought to summon the anger back, to feel something that would give me a chance at escaping this encounter unscathed, but all I found was the exhaustion that had been my companion since January.
“I have one in my car. A towel, that is.” He ripped his gaze from mine and motioned to the box. “Do me a favor and throw that away for me? God knows who she’d sic it on next.”
“I can do that.”
“Thank you.”
Anne cleared her throat from the back porch, and we both pivoted to face her across the pool. She drummed her fingertips on the railing, took one look at Hudson, and shook her head. “Did we turn our clocks back ten years or something?”
“Nice to see you, too, Anne.” Hudson offered a mock salute.
“And what are you doing—” Her eyes flared and she pointed a finger at me. “You went swimming alone at the beach again, didn’t you?”
“Maybe?” I gave her a cringing smile. “But I was safe the whole time. And Hudson here is now a rescue diver, so there was nothing to worry about.”
She glanced between us like we were teenagers again and she had to cover so Mom didn’t find us sneaking out. “Which is why he’s all wet, I’m guessing. Fully clothed, at that.”
“That one’s on me,” Hudson admitted.
“Great.” She nodded sarcastically. “I’ll . . . leave you to whatever it is you’re doing.” Her heels clicked on the porch as she headed inside. “Hudson, do me a favor and at least say goodbye to her this time before you go, would you? It would be a shame for me to go to jail for acting on a decade’s worth of intrusive thoughts when it comes to your demise.” The screen door slammed behind her.
“And that’s my cue.” Gripping the box, I walked through the grass and around the pool, letting every question I’d silently gathered over the years die on my tongue.
“Allie,” he called out. “Alessandra.”
I paused but didn’t look back. That was the only way I’d survived the last ten years, keeping my eyes forward.
“I’m truly, genuinely sorry. For everything.”
My eyes slid shut, and I waited for the words to hit, to soothe the festering wound that refused to heal, but they fell into me like a coin tossed down a wishing well, too small to effect any change—shiny, but pointless. “Get her home safely.”
I headed inside without another word, slipping up the carpeted back steps and down the long hallway past Eva’s room and the shrine that had been Lina’s, to mine, which sat across from Anne’s.
Then I showered off the salt and shock and tried like hell to scrub any thought of Hudson off me. My skin was more than wrinkled by the time I finished and dressed in simple leggings and a lightweight sweater, ignoring all the trendy items Anne had packed for me. It wasn’t like I had to impress anyone here.
The sound of a knife meeting the cutting board repeatedly greeted me as I walked into the professional-grade kitchen.
Anne had ditched the matching jacket to her navy blue sheath dress and was chopping the hell out of a bag of carrots. Something at her meeting had gone very wrong.
Barefoot, I padded across the hardwood floor to the refrigerator, then pulled out two bottles of Smartwater and slid into the middle of eight high-backed barstools that sat along the white marble island. I twisted open a bottle, then waited for her to pause her vegetable massacre before sliding it across the expanse.
She caught it with her left hand and put down the knife with her right. “Thanks.”
“How was your meeting?” I asked, cracking open my own bottle.
“Finn wants the brownstone and said I could have everything else.” She glanced away a second too late to hide the shimmer of tears in her eyes. “So my attorney thinks it went swimmingly well. I’ll leave the marriage financially better off than I came into it, which is a win for some people, I guess.”