Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
I break into a small smile. Clay works in a funeral home while she takes online classes.
“We have a makeup artist, right?” she asks, but it’s not really a question. “They do the hair, too. But oh no, the deceased woman’s daughter wants to do it herself, so I let her come in. I take her to the room, and she freaks out because her mother is naked.”
“She was naked?”
“No, she had a sheet over her, of course!” She scowls at me like she probably did with the poor bereaved. Clay doesn’t like to be told how to do anything. “But the daughter wanted her dressed, and I’m trying to explain that I can’t put on her funeral clothes until the hair and makeup are done in case she spills powder or drops the lipstick.”
It makes sense. But I guess now she’ll know to warn the next person who wants to do their own family member’s hair and makeup. See? She learned something, even though she’s not ready to admit it.
She winces. “I don’t think I have the bedside manner for this.”
“You do.” I lean my elbows down on the bar, coming in closer. “We’re just not used to serving others, Clay.”
Except when dressed in cute cocktail dresses at thousand-dollar-a-plate charity dinners. That’s how we empathize. From afar. With a checkbook.
“You know you’re choosing a weird career, right?” I tease, still unable to stomach what she has to see every day. “But there’s no one else I’d trust to take care of me if I go before you.”
“Oh God.” She drops her head back. “Please don’t say that. And please don’t specifically request me in your will, because I won’t be able to deny you your final wish, but I won’t be able to handle it, either. Thankfully, Liv said that I can let my boss tend to her body if anything happens.” She reaches over and grabs a bar menu. “Which it won’t because I’ll die.”
“You’ve talked about your deaths?”
“It comes up with what I do.” She flips the menu over, reading the other side. “Macon doesn’t even want a viewing. Straight to cremation. Sounds like him. No fanfare.”
I rise up straight. “He said that?”
“Nah, it’s in his will,” she tells me. “Liv showed me. He just had it redone this past summer, actually.”
I stand there as Clay scans the appetizers, oblivious to my shock. He just had his will redone? Why?
The loss of appetite. The fatigue. The drinking. The mood swings. Is he sick?
Or is he anticipating an early death? Lots of people would love to see him dead. People who want the land and know that while they can’t get it away from him, his five siblings won’t put up nearly as good a fight. They would never go to the lengths Macon would to keep it.
But then Clay startles me out of my thoughts. “Coconut shrimp!” she shouts, beaming. She meets my eyes, slamming the menu down on the bar. “Psh, please. Two orders.”
I sigh. “But then I have to go over to the restaurant and get it.”
“Ohhhhh, I know,” she mock whines back at me. “You chose a weird career.”
I snicker, loving how she throws my words back at me. I turn and punch in the order to the POS system. “I’m just not used to serving others.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
I jerk my eyes back over my shoulder. What did she say?
She smirks, props her knee against the bar and crosses her arms over her chest. “Iron?”
I growl under my breath. “Shit. How did you hear about that?”
“Liv.”
“Iron told her?” I blurt out.
“Trace told her.”
“Ugh.” I finish inputting her order and twist back around, feeling her smug smile on me.
“So, was it him, then?” she presses. “On the couch? It was Iron?”
I fill a glass with ice and make myself a drink. “Could’ve been. I never asked him, and it was good, but … I don’t think it was, honestly.”
A blush warms my cheeks after admitting that to her. I don’t want to feel ashamed, but Clay’s only slept with one person. I don’t know why it matters that I’ve slept with more, but it matters to some people, and that matters to me. What’s Liv thinking about all this?
“I don’t know.” I take a drink, leaning down onto the bar again. “I’m getting more confused. Maybe I’m remembering a feeling or a scent that night that wasn’t really there to begin with. Maybe I’m remembering it as more than it was.”
I was in such a hard mood that night, and maybe it felt better than it otherwise would have.
But it wasn’t just about what I was feeling. It was what he was doing.
“Whoever it was,” I tell her, lowering my voice, “it was like he was talking to me without saying anything.”
It was fucking. But he was intimate.