Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
It had to be really bad if she hadn’t seen anyone. Were her parents so mad at her they were keeping her from her friends? She needed them right now.
He’d been in hell, not knowing what had happened. He always knew what happened to Kala. She would text him when she stubbed her freaking toe.
He’d sent her text after text, begging her to unblock him. Well, he’d sent them to Tasha since she was the only one of the Taggart sisters who was talking to him right now.
TJ stopped, looping his thumbs through the straps of his backpack. “By her, I take it you mean Kala. Yes. She was at Uncle Sean’s Friday night. We had a barbecue.”
So the Taggarts were circling around her. Good. He wished his family had been invited. “How is she?”
TJ seemed to think about it for a moment. “She’s Kala. For a chick who got kidnapped and apparently saw a bunch of shit, she’s surprisingly cool with it. And she claims her love of anchovies saved Kyle’s life, so she’s never giving them up no matter how stinky they are. Then she went to Chloe Lodge’s party and proceeded to prove it by eating a whole large with like fifty of those fish on them. I lost a bet on that one.”
Somehow in his head he’d thought she was traumatized. She was holing up because terrible things had happened, and if he could get to her, he could make it all right. He’d had this weird Romeo and Juliet thing in his head. He’d literally been making plans to sneak out and break into her house.
All he knew was he was done with everyone keeping him away from her. He should have been there when she got off the plane, but no one had even told him when she was going to land. They’d informed him she was home and she’d been looked over by a doctor. She was fine.
She couldn’t be fine.
“She went to a party?” He hadn’t even known there was a party.
“You’re grounded, dude,” TJ said by way of explanation. “I mean she is too, but apparently she’s on some kind of weird training schedule, and she can earn time in the real world. I think it helped that her dad was there, too. They let us hang out in the game room while they were in… It’s a room with a lot of booze, but it doesn’t look like a bar. Chloe’s dad is weird and intimidating. Well, one of them. The other one grilled hot dogs and didn’t make fun of me when I two fisted. Uncle Ian did, though. He said I was going to get fluffy if I didn’t watch it. I think he body shamed me.”
Cooper ignored his best friend. “She hasn’t called me. I don’t suppose she earned her phone privileges back.”
TJ seemed to understand there was an undercurrent to this conversation he hadn’t counted on. “Uhm, I mean she’s been calling Lou a lot. Lou’s tutoring me and usually she’s very focused, but she claims she has to answer Kala now because she’s worried she’ll feel abandoned if she doesn’t. She had her phone on Friday. She was showing me the weapons her dad’s training her on.”
An armed Kala was a fearsome thing. “Why hasn’t she called me? I got my phone back but she blocked me and didn’t remember to fix it.”
TJ’s lips pursed like they always did when he was thinking something through.
When he was trying to figure out how to not hurt someone.
“Just tell me.” He had to know. It was killing him.
“I think you should give her some space.”
“She doesn’t need space. She needs me to apologize,” he said, but his eyes were on the parking lot because he was almost certain he saw Tasha parking the Subaru she drove. It must be nice to have an older sibling so they didn’t have to get dropped off by their mom.
Kala offered to have Tash pick him up, too, but he’d declined. He had a weird schedule.
And if anyone saw him getting out of Tasha’s car with her, they would have drawn conclusions.
He was an asshole, but he was done with all of that now. He wasn’t letting anyone keep him from her. She was his best friend. He just hadn’t been much of one to her. That changed. Now.
“I think she’s maybe a little angry at you,” TJ said with a wince. “Like she doesn’t want to hear your name and stuff.”
He should have known Kala would take all her hurt and put it into anger. “I can handle it.”
Anything would be better than this silence.
His heart threatened to stop because she was walking up the steps with her sisters and Lou. Kenzie was bouncing as she spoke, and Kala looked at her twin with an almost indulgent smile.