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)
She was silent for a moment, her head turned up to the stars. “If it helps, I think you were right.”
“About the sex, yes, I was.” He was only going to agree with her so far. “But not the rest. I know I sometimes made you feel like I was hiding you, but when you started school again, you were the one who ignored me. I can’t help but think it’s because you blamed me for what happened to you. I’ll take it. I’ll take that blame because I never should have allowed you to leave.”
“Like you could have stopped me,” Kala argued.
“I could have tried.” He remembered back to the night and the awful time when he’d had no idea where she was. “I was sick. So sick. After your parents went to find you, I sat there praying I would see you again. And when I did, you looked through me. I know it’s not fair. I know I’m the one who screwed up, but I hated the fact that you couldn’t look at me because you were the only one who really saw me.”
“I think everyone saw you, Coop. You were like the king of high school.”
“They saw the me I wanted them to see. They didn’t see me. They saw the scared kid who thought he had to be perfect or his parents might regret adopting him.”
“You know that wasn’t true.”
She’d told him a million times. Naturally she was the only one he’d told, and when she’d stopped talking to him, he’d stopped talking about it. Years and wisdom had solved the problem, but he’d missed her. “It felt like it at the time. And it wasn’t anything my parents did. It was me. I wondered if there was something I should know, some, I don’t know, weird DNA trick waiting to make me someone else. Like badness or laziness can be inherited. I know nothing about my birth mother. I’m okay with that now, but at the time I questioned everything. Including why she gave me away.”
“She probably wanted what was best for you and she couldn’t give it. Or she didn’t want a kid,” Kala said with her usual logic. She frowned. “But it was probably like the first one. Like she loved you and stuff but didn’t have any money.”
He grinned her way. She wasn’t trying to be mean. She often said what she was thinking around him. Kala would be utterly closed lipped around anyone she didn’t know, but she let all her thoughts flow with him. Even if she didn’t admit it, she felt safe with him. “Baby, what else went through your head? Please? I want to hear it.”
She frowned and looked adorable with all that pink hair piled high on her head. “Fine. I was thinking she also might have been on the run from a drug cartel and she had to give birth in a bathroom and she knew a kid would weigh her down while she plotted her bloody revenge and one day when she’s killed everyone she needs to, she’ll come back and be like ‘hey, I’m your mom.’”
He reached out and brushed a hand across her hair. “You should have been a novelist.”
“Too many words. But I do like a good story.” She moved closer to him, dragging her blanket along. “You don’t still think that way, do you?”
“No. Not at all.” He stroked her hair again and she sighed and laid down, her head on his lap, eyes facing toward the fire. “I know my parents love me. I know they want what’s best for me.”
She snorted. “They definitely want that.”
“And what’s best for me is you,” he said quietly.
Her hand came out to cover his knee in what felt like a deeply possessive gesture. “Your mother would disagree, and you’re a bastard because I didn’t want to talk about this.”
He wanted her possessive. She was a Taggart lion, and they didn’t share the things they loved. He wanted to be something she didn’t share.
“We don’t have to, but I don’t think you understand what she means, baby.” He kept up the slow stroking of her hair since he could feel her relaxing. “Even if we don’t talk about it, I need you to hear me on this. I love my mother. She would never ask me to choose. Never. But if on some separate plane of existence there lives an Eve McKay who would, I would choose you. Always.”
Her jaw went tight. “You just told me how much you care about their opinion.”
“Yes, I do, and you don’t understand her opinion. You always hear the words, but you often don’t get the intent behind them, especially when deep emotion is involved.”
She sat up suddenly, turning to him. “Because I don’t have emotions.”
He groaned but forged ahead because this was a conversation they needed to have. “Because you feel so fucking deeply you sometimes struggle to understand what other people feel. Especially if they aren’t perfectly clear in their wording.”