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)
* * * *
Cooper watched Kala walk away and wished he hadn’t had the talk with his mom earlier today. He should have kept it all to himself. Sucked it up like a man, but no, he had to seek validation or something. They’d been sitting in the movie theater arcade. He’d found himself alone with her while Vivi and Hunter had been playing the latest video dance game. He’d been drinking a coke, and somehow all of his worries about how close he and Kala were getting spilled out.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” his mom had asked.
And he’d known he wasn’t.
“You have to be careful, sweetie. She’s far more fragile than she seems,” his mother had said. “She loves the way her father does, and that can be amazing when paired with maturity, but right now she has all of Ian’s intensity with none of the life experience that tempered him. She’s going through a phase, and it’s a hard one. I should know. I went through it too, and it can feel like you’re drowning. The problem is sometimes when you try to save a drowning person, they take you down with them.” She’d pulled in a long breath and sat back as though it had been a hard conversation for her. “I know you’ve cared about her for a long time, but you’re both so young. Is there any way you could wait a little longer?”
He watched as Kala walked away, her slender form swallowed by darkness, and realized he might be waiting forever because his girl wasn’t known for her sense of forgiveness.
His girl.
Damn. If she was his girl, shouldn’t it be easier? Shouldn’t it be like their parents? They were surrounded by long-term married couples who got along and never had any drama. Kala was never-ending drama.
And now she wouldn’t let him walk her home. He seriously considered following her, but he valued his balls. She would take them since he’d broken her freaking heart. The look in her eyes would stay with him for the rest of his life. He hadn’t been trying to hurt her. It would have been better if she’d cried, but she wouldn’t cry in front of him now.
He should never have touched her. He shouldn’t have moved it past friendship.
His parents were perfect. Oh, they’d had trouble in the past, but their problems had been about something traumatic that had happened to his mom. His parents knew how to talk to each other. Shouldn’t those skills be in his DNA?
Except he didn’t share their DNA because Alex and Eve McKay weren’t his biological parents. He didn’t know what was in his DNA.
He let out a low groan and moved back to the door leading him into the kitchen. He wasn’t going into that tonight. He had way bigger issues than how he fit into his family.
He pulled his cell out and pressed the number connecting him to someone who was almost as familiar as Kala.
“Hey, what’s going on, Coop?” Kenzie Taggart sounded bouncy and happy, with pop music playing slightly too loud in the background.
She wasn’t going to sound so happy in a moment. “I think your sister and I just broke up.”
Had they been together? It wasn’t like they did a bunch of stuff in public. Only in private. Just for them.
“What?” Kenzie asked, and there was the sound of someone moving and then the music was off. “You broke up with Kala? How exactly can you break up when you refuse to acknowledge her publicly? Is this more like you finally cut her loose?”
Whoa. He hadn’t expected the… What did he even call the tone he heard in Kenzie’s voice? “It’s not like that. Look, I think we should slow down, and when I told her she freaked out on me and left.”
“Slow down?” There was the muffled sound of Kenzie telling someone else to give her some space. So Tash was listening, too. All the Taggart women were going to hate him.
Anxiety made his gut tighten. He was causing trouble. It was the thing he didn’t do. His parents were great. He didn’t intend to ever give them a reason to regret taking him in. “Kenz, you know how intense she can be. I wasn’t trying to hurt her.”
There seemed to be some kind of argument going on, and then Tasha’s voice came over the line. “Cooper, how long ago did she leave?”
Tasha would be fair at least. When he thought about it, he was kind of happy Kala’s twin would take her side without having to hear any of the circumstances. He was pretty sure Hunter would do the same for him. “A couple of minutes. She should be there soon.”
A sigh came over the line. “Or she’ll go to Boba Babes and drown her sorrows. I’ll call her.” She was quiet for a moment. “How harsh were you with her?”