Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Unable to sit here and act like I wasn’t angry, I stood up and walked out of the room before I made a comment that I would regret.
Oakley had always been that girl. The one men wanted to possess. The girl they’d give up everything for. Then, there had been me. Helplessly fucking obsessed with her. Completely in love, and she’d crushed me. I couldn’t truly hate her for it. Not after Sarah. Sure, I’d gotten drunk and fucked Sylvia, who had thrown herself at me. But Sarah had come from that night.
More laughter came from the living room. I jerked open the cabinet and got down a whiskey glass. I needed a drink.
“DAD!” Sarah called out.
I dropped the ice into the glass. “Yeah?”
“Oaky said that she can come stay with me when you go out of town next week. You don’t have to hire that Ms. Maynard to come. She will do it for free, and I want to see her.”
I closed my eyes and swore under my breath.
Ms. Maynard was a former neighbor of mine who I hired to stay with Sarah a couple of times when I had to work late or the one night I was out of town. Sarah had complained that she smelled of mothballs and made her go to bed by nine, but other than that, she had done a good job.
“It’s for five days. Doesn’t she need to work or whatever she does?” I asked, trying not to sound as irritated as I was.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want Sarah to see Oakley. I just thought it was best that I take Sarah there to visit for a day after she settled in here. The settling wasn’t going smoothly though, and I hadn’t had time to take her for a visit. The main issue was, I didn’t want Oakley here, in my house.
“She works from home, so it’s no problem!” Sarah called out.
Picking up the bottle of whiskey, I didn’t even measure the shots, but filled the damn glass up. Fucking hell. I wasn’t going to get out of this. Was Oakley trying to piss me off? She was on a date, for Christ’s sake! Did she have to butt into our life while she was with some guy?
“SO, can she?” Sarah asked.
I took one long drink, then sighed. “Yeah. Sure.”
The loud squeal of delight that rang through the house was the first bit of joy that these walls had heard since we had moved in here.
I’d not wanted to raise Sarah in my old apartment, so I bought this house in a nice subdivision with a great school system the week after Sylvia’s death. It was a new build, and we had moved in the day after I signed the papers.
Almost five thousand square feet of living space. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a game room, living room, library, state-of-the-art kitchen, formal dining room, great room, a heated pool with a hot tub that sat adjacent to it and flowed over into the shallow end. All of this, and still, we seemed lost. Sarah was detached and sad. Me? I was fucking clueless on how to do this right. Buying this massive house clearly hadn’t been what she needed.
The padding of her bare feet running down the hallway, followed by Belladonna’s paws against the hardwood, grew louder until Sarah burst through the doorway. Her face was flushed, and the brilliant grin on it made my chest tighten. She was happy. No, she was fucking thrilled.
I’d spent a fortune on this damn house and not gotten one tiny smile from her when she saw the pool or the huge bedroom with attached bathroom that was all hers. Yet the one female on earth who I didn’t like could bring her joy. How fucking perfect. At least I would be out of town. I had promised Sarah that she’d get to see Oakley, and so far, I had found every reason for that not to happen. It wasn’t fair to her, and I knew it. The issues I had with Oakley weren’t Sarah’s fault. I had to deal with them and get over it.
As much as I hated to admit it, Sarah needed her aunt. I couldn’t be all she had. I was just Dad. She was a girl who had lost her mom. It was time I let Oakley help. Even if I didn’t approve of her, she loved Sarah, and Sarah loved her. I would just make sure not to be here when she was.
Five
Oakley
Eleven Years Ago
Wells left me on the sofa in the great room at his house while he went with Storm to find his father’s liquor cabinet to get some bourbon. There was a keg of beer on the back patio, but they had decided they wanted something better in their red plastic cups.