Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
Jeff turned back, so Javi did too.
“Jess—” my brother began.
“Save it,” I bit off. “I don’t get it, because I don’t have it, but I can empathize that your illness sucks.”
“Yeah, you don’t get—”
I cut him off.
“But I’ll leave you with this. My life isn’t about you, Jeff. It’s clear your head is so far up your own ass, you don’t realize that. That said, when you disappear for six months, and I’m looking under overpasses and behind dumpsters and spending money I can’t afford on bottled water to earn the trust of a community of people who don’t have a lot of trust left in them, it’s because I love you. It’s because you’re my brother. It’s because you were the only solid thing I had my entire fucking life, and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you. I know the man you are. I know you’re smart and capable. You aren’t the only one who has issues, you just have a particular one that needs managing. And yeah, I worry about that. Not about you managing it, just about you needing to cope with it. What you’ve been so fucking selfish you didn’t see was, I have issues too. And they don’t always involve you.”
With that, I pushed through them and got to an open-air breezeway of an apartment complex.
I was stopped when Jeff caught my arm.
I looked at my brother’s handsome face, and it almost broke me, because I loved him so much, and he’d just laid me out. Fortunately, being as insanely pissed as I was held me together.
“I just wanted to give you a break from me,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t need a break from you,” I replied. “But I guess now I need to figure out what to do after losing you.”
“You haven’t lost me, Jessie,” he whispered.
“Let me rephrase. Now you need to figure out what to do after throwing me away.”
Jeff sure flinched at that.
Even Javi grunted at the weight of my blow.
I was so angry and hurt, I was beyond caring.
I yanked my arm from his hold, slid my gaze through Javi, who was sporting an open look of concern that made his male beauty exponentially more beautiful, and he had it aimed at me, and then I turned and jogged in the direction I was brought in.
I hit the sidewalk, stood there and pulled my phone out of my bag to call an Uber.
And yeah.
I had seventeen missed calls and not a small amount of texts.
I was about to hit go on a ride, then start phoning people to tell them I was okay, when a line of Denalis sped down the block and came to a dramatic halt opposite me.
The men rolled out, and they did “as a unit” a whole lot better than us Angels did (for your information, “the men” were Mace, Cap, Roam, Knox, Liam…and Eric).
The first ones formed a huddle around me.
Eric got in my space, cupped my face in both hands and dipped close to me, his eyes roaming everywhere.
“You okay?” he asked.
“So you do track my phone.”
“Answer me, babe.”
“I’m fine. They didn’t hurt me. It was my brother. By the way, I believe Mountain’s first name is Javier, since he goes by Javi.”
A quick glance over my head, then back to me. “They were here?”
“Yep.”
All the men but Eric took off.
I pulled out of Eric’s hold, turned to look over my shoulder, and called after them, “You won’t find them!”
This had no effect. They kept motoring, or, I should say, they took off so fast, I couldn’t see any of them, so I turned back to Eric.
“Are you okay?” he repeated.
“Apparently, I was a pain in my brother’s ass, which he decided to interpret as needing to give me a break from him. Though, he made it clear that mostly his vanishing was about me being a pain in his ass.”
Eric’s mouth tightened.
“I really want to go home, Turner,” I stated.
He slid an arm around my shoulders, came to my side so he could tuck me into his, and murmured, “Then let’s get you home.”
Eric didn’t take me to my Mini that was still at The Surf Club.
He took me to the Oasis.
He did the arm around my shoulders thing to the security gate, whereupon he punched the code in.
“You know the code?” I asked.
“All the men know the code,” he answered.
Cars tracked. Phones tracked. Security codes disseminated.
Well, tonight proved it was good they kept an eye on us. Because if that situation had been about someone with an unhappy (for me) message to deliver, they wouldn’t have had the time to alter the course of my life and mental health in delivering it before the guys got there.
We walked in, and I stopped dead at the holiday display before me.