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)
Well, he’d wondered and now he knew. “You were a virgin.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” she replied. “I won’t ever truly know because all the people who could have told me are dead, and I’m also okay with that. I just…sometimes I wish I knew. I wish it wasn’t always there under the surface, this thing I can’t quite see. I don’t know if what’s dancing around underneath me is a shadow meaning nothing or a shark that’s going to eat me from the inside out. I know I lied.”
“About having sex?” She’d alluded to previous boyfriends, but she’d never gone into details. Certainly not with him. “Not really, now that I think about it. You allowed people to think you had.”
“I wanted to be normal.”
“You are so much more than normal.” He reached out and cupped her cheek. “If there is one thing it seems I learned since high school that you didn’t, it’s that normal isn’t something we should aspire to. You’re you, and I that-word-you-can’t-hear-me-say-yet you for it. I was a stupid kid who didn’t understand the magnificent woman in front of me. I do now. You think I’m going to revert back to form, like I’m going to wake up and want some sweet thing who doesn’t growl at me, who doesn’t fight the whole world.”
“Who could be a good wife and mom.” Her words were so hollow it hit him in the gut.
“Are you fucking kidding? Baby, I’m going to have to ask what drugs you’re on now. You don’t think your mother was a good mom?”
“She was the best.”
“And she was weird as hell. She talked openly about her days as an assassin and regularly got caught having sex with your dad. She spent every Saturday night at a lifestyle club, and I’m pretty sure she helped bury a bunch of bodies because one of my core childhood memories is of our parents having a big fight about the hole they’d just dug and your mom complaining about the Agency needing to pay for dry cleaning. I won’t even go into your dad.” Maybe he was asking the wrong questions. “Did you want something more normal? Did you want a white picket fence and perfect childhood?”
“It was perfect.”
There she was. “Yes, it was. And whatever life we can have together will be perfectly ours. I don’t want anything else. Anything less than the weird, magical world we can create together.”
She was silent for a long moment before turning her eyes his way, tears shining there. She never, ever cried. “I don’t know what I want, Coop. I don’t know that I want a family I might let down. I love my parents. I love my sisters and brothers, but sometimes I think about how much easier it would be if I didn’t.”
It made him ache because he knew he’d been the first real crack in her life. Sure, she’d gotten bullied for being weird and she’d known from a very young age that she didn’t fit like the rest of her family, but she’d persevered. She’d been strong even as a teen. It had been his betrayal that sent her here. Made her question. “It won’t be because no matter what your inner voices are telling you, you won’t be able to turn it off. That love you feel isn’t some switch you can flip. If it was, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me right now. You are a warrior goddess but what you don’t understand is what makes you truly strong is the delicate place inside that holds all your love. Even when it hurt, there was a part of you defending that place in your soul. If you could turn it off, you wouldn’t be the one everyone goes to when they need something.”
“That’s not true. Everyone goes to Kenz unless they need someone fucked up.”
She thought she was nothing more than an enforcer? “They go to Kenzie when they want a shoulder to cry on and someone who will agree with them. When they need real help and advice, they come to you. They come because you’ll tell them the truth and won’t judge them.”
“Oh, I judge plenty,” she began.
She was not going to turn this into a rundown of all the dumb shit her cousins did. “All I’m saying is when they need a stereotypical mom they run to Kenz. When they need a dad…”
She groaned. “I know. I know they call me She-ian.”
“Yeah, like they call your Aunt Erin, who you think is the coolest woman on the planet. Also not a typical stand by your man, have dinner on the table and spurt out twelve kids trad wife. This is where you think my mom is saying one thing when it’s another. She’s using a bunch of therapy speak. She was worried we were getting in too deep as kids, and she’s worried I’ll hurt you now because I pretended to be something I’m not.”