Total pages in book: 213
Estimated words: 201920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1010(@200wpm)___ 808(@250wpm)___ 673(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1010(@200wpm)___ 808(@250wpm)___ 673(@300wpm)
“Oh my God,” Addison gasps and reaches her small hand out on the table for mine. “I’m so sorry.” One thing I’ve always admired about Addison is how easy it is to read her. How genuine she is. How honest. Even if the things she was thinking were less than appealing.
“My father liked you, so he told Tyler that you would come back.” I don’t know why I tell her that. The memory doesn’t sit well with me and the conversation isn’t going where I’d like it to. Uncomfortable is an emotion I don’t often experience. I suppose it makes sense that I am now though. Yet again … that’s Addison’s doing. But I allow it. It would be easy to get up and leave, to not have to deal with this conversation. But having Addison tonight is worth it.
Barely catching a glimpse of the starched white shirt of the waiter, I hold up my hand just in time to stop him.
“Yes?” he asks and I order two rounds of black rose shots, which are a mix of vodka and tequila and the restaurant’s drink of choice. Plus another whiskey sour. I greatly underestimated this conversation and the need for alcohol to go along with it.
“Anything else?” the waiter asks and Addison pipes up. With her hands folded in her lap, she orders the bruschetta.
It’s only once the waiter’s left that she leans forward, tucking her hair behind her ear and says, “I didn’t eat much today.”
“Get whatever you’d like,” I tell her easily and keep my gaze from wandering straight down her blouse. It’s only a peek. Only a hint at what’s under the thin cotton, but I can see the lace of her bra and it begs me to look.
“I have to get this off my chest.” Her words distract me and looking at the serious expression in her eyes I’m irritated again, but I keep my lips shut tight. It will be worth it when it’s over with. It better be.
“I just … even that day when I left, I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t appreciate everything.”
She has no fucking idea. How is it even possible that she could be so blind?
She lived under our roof. It was off and on for nearly a year while the two of them dated. Tyler insisted. And the nights she didn’t stay felt off toward the end. Each and every time she left I thought it was my doing.
But she always came back.
Tyler wasn’t one to make demands, but he wanted her there with him. He wanted her protected and cared for. And when he told us why, when he told us what she’d been through, my father agreed.
It wasn’t just that she had a tragic backstory. That she’d lost her parents and had no one.
It was the story of her previous foster father that changed my father’s mind.
You could see it in the way Addison shied away from everything and everyone. And how she didn’t want to go back to a stranger’s house and hope nothing like that ever happened again.
She was safe with us. Even if she felt like she was intruding, every one of us wanted her there.
Even more so after we paid that sick fuck a visit.
It wasn’t in Tyler’s nature to want to hurt someone. Addison had a good way of bringing out a different part of him. She’s good at that, at bringing out facets of your personality that were dormant before.
Carter was the one who decided when and how we’d take care of the asshole who’d touched her the year before. He was forty years old with a fifteen-year-old girl under his care.
Carter decided all five of us would go together while Addison was at class. The drive was only three hours away. Too long to do it at night, because she’d have noticed. But we had plenty of time during the day.
Carter always has a plan, and I was supposed to go around the back. Which is right where the asshole was raking up leaves.
I’d never killed anyone with gardening equipment before. I still wonder what it would have been like had I used the sharp tines of the metal but the damn thing broke in half. The spike of the splintered wooden handle worked well enough.
He got out one scream, if you can even call it that. More of a pathetic cry.
My family may have sheltered her.
I killed for her.
Tyler should have told her back then, and I have a mind to tell her now. But I don’t break promises, not even to the dead.
So I keep that little bit of our history to myself.
The memory gives me the strength to look her in the eyes as I tell her, “You care a lot about what other people think. You’d be happier if you didn’t.”