Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
“Sometimes men yell,” she shrugged. “Because they don’t know how to properly express their emotions. Because they’re really just toddlers. Because they’re scared. And I will say, I don’t know that man very well, but he stood in front of a gun declaring how much he loved you.”
My heart rattled at the mere memory.
“It is still not okay for him to yell at you like he did, though,” she added, eyes brimming with passion. “And he owes you an apology centered around a nice purse or multiple orgasms,” she winked. “He’s not your father,” she squeezed my hand.
I nodded, hearing her words. Knowing that they were technically true, but my heart couldn’t trust them.
Couldn’t trust him.
Because even though my father was buried, I didn’t know when he’d stop haunting me.
If he’d ever stop haunting me.
Chapter Twenty
I was nervous walking through the door of Mom and Swiss’s house. I hated that. That I almost felt the way I used to feel, walking into my old house in Carver Springs. Tense... Holding my breath for something I didn’t even completely understand.
It wasn’t until I walked into the little house my mom lived in before moving there that it became clear that I’d never been in a home before. I grieved and celebrated that. It sucked that I didn’t get that growing up, but it would’ve sucked a whole lot more if my mother had never found the strength to leave, had never been able to create what she did.
I had to be thankful for that. For her protecting me from the truth for as long as she did.
“You’re back!” Mom yelled, pouncing on me the second the front door closed behind us.
“I was worried sick,” she said into my hair. “Everyone was. You left your phone at the club. I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she said, squeezing my upper arms. “I knew that there was never going to be a good way for that news to come out, and I really thought if I caught him when he was soft and agreeable he wouldn’t go all…” she trailed off.
“Crazy homicidal biker?” Sariah offered cheerfully from behind me.
Mom nodded, not at all surprised to see that my best friend had traveled to Garnett to be here for me. “Yeah, but I should’ve known better,” she sighed. “I really do apologize that that was your first impression of the club, honey,” she told Sariah. “We are a little bit crazy but not usually brandishing a deadly weapon kind of crazy.”
Sariah shrugged. “You’ve got absolutely nothing to apologize for. I was worried that Violet was exaggerating about the club, and it turns out she was downplaying it,” she giggled.
Mom’s concerned eyes moved back to me. “Are you okay?” she asked, looking me over.
“Mom, I’m fine,” I reassured her. “I’m annoyed at all of the people with an XY chromosome and a Sons of Templar cut within a fifty-mile radius, but other than that, I’m good.”
“I’m not exactly thrilled with them either,” Mom’s brows pinched together. “But no one was expecting the news that you’re not only pregnant but in love… Especially since you had been very adamant about avoiding both of those things.” “Are you disappointed in me?” I asked, peering up at her from below my lashes.
“Of course, I’m not.” Her face fell. “No. I’m shocked. I’m worried in a way that a mother worries. I’m trying to recalibrate. I’m also trying to compute that I’m going to be a grandmother and the mother of a toddler.” She scrunched up her nose. “But I’m not disappointed. No way, no how.”
“Okay.” I exhaled a relieved breath.
“Now,” Mom clapped her hands together. “Swiss is away brooding somewhere, and if he has any sense he’ll only come back here with chocolate and apologies. So let’s have a girls’ night.”
A small person came running in and attached himself to Sariah’s ankle.
“As long as you don’t mind one boy crashing the party,” my mother amended.
Sariah picked him up, blowing a raspberry on his stomach as he squealed in delight.
“He can always crash the party,” I said, looking to my little brother while trying to process that he would have a little playmate in eight months.
Instead of thinking too hard about that, I focused on my baby brother and our girls’ night. Or at least, I did my best.
Sariah and my mother had a lot of fun that night. My mother cooked up a storm, dancing around the kitchen, trying to overcompensate for the events of the morning, I guessed.
Also because her and Sariah could drink wine. They had two bottles. The bitches.
I was sipping on seltzer water, both hating and loving seeing my best friend and my mother getting along so wildly.
Mom had already started talking about building an addition onto the house for the baby, as if it were obvious that the baby and I would live there. I didn’t have the energy to dispute that because I didn’t even know where we were going to live.