Total pages in book: 170
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
My face heats up at the thought. It’s as if I blinked and I see it all so differently. I was so scared before that I couldn’t see how much they meant to me, or how much I meant to them. Everything seemed hopeless. Now I know that it’s not, and here I am, tempted to give in to those feelings.
“They care for you, Braelynn.” Aria doesn’t turn to face me as she stirs the meat sauce in the pan, but her voice is gentle. “I was there when the lawyer called, and he told us—” She shakes her head. With a few taps of the spatula on the edge of the pan, she puts it down and finally looks at me. “I care for you, too. So if you ever feel low again, will you tell me? I’m here for you. We’re all here for you.”
“Ever feel low?” I whisper the way she said it and feel my throat get tight. We both know what she’s talking about. The window incident.
“I don’t judge you,” she says firmly. “All of us have our issues.”
“I think…” I run my hand over my hair. Behind me, the water is starting to bubble. I can hear them popping at the surface. “I think I mostly just don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s fine.” She reassures me with a quick smile. “We don’t have to talk about it. We can do whatever you need.”
Aria’s kind. She’s almost too kind, which makes me feel more conflicted. I don’t know if I can trust her. I don’t know if I can trust anyone. Guilt twists my stomach for even having the thought in the first place.
What the hell is wrong with me? With the water boiling, I shove it all down and grab the box of spaghetti.
The guilt doesn’t go away as I put the noodles into the boiling water and set a timer. Aria works on the sauce, stirring in spices, and we stand side-by-side in front of the stove.
Neither of us says much, and Aria seems fine with not talking. That makes me feel even guiltier. I don’t have any business not trusting her, I guess. She hasn’t done anything to make me think she’d try to hurt me on purpose.
Hell, I’m the one who messaged her.
I’m hungry and emotional. That’s all this is. I can’t be expected to think straight when today has gone the way it has and I’m starving.
Aria takes down plates before I can even ask where they are. She prepares the plates while all I do is watch. “Come on. Sit down and let’s figure it out.”
For a second, I think she’s talking about the whole situation, and that doesn’t seem like something we can solve over a plate of pasta. “Figure out what?”
She turns to look me in the eye as she answers, “When would be a good time to meet your mom and to introduce her to your new husband.”
DECLAN
That fucker didn’t let me out of there till 3:00 a.m. I sat in a room doing fuck all with nothing but my damn thoughts and an old-ass heater clicking on and off every twenty fucking minutes.
There are four bottles of whiskey on the bar cart and I choose the one closest. I don’t give a fuck which one I drink so long as it’ll stop my racing thoughts. I just want to sleep and have a moment of rest.
“You all right?” Carter’s voice startles me from behind.
“Nothing I haven’t been through before,” I answer him. He’s dressed in black silk pajama bottoms and looks like he rolled out of bed. “What are you doing up?”
“Waiting for you to get home. Did you check on Braelynn?” he asks me…which is out of the norm.
“Yeah, before coming out here.” She’s sleeping soundly, wearing the ring I bought her, although I keep those details to myself. “Why?”
“Paperwork isn’t filed yet?” he asks rather than answering my question.
“We’ll get it postdated and turned in tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“Why did you want to know if I’d checked on her?”
“I didn’t feel comfortable checking the cameras and Aria was asleep. Wanted to make sure she was all right.”
A tinge of something warm flows through my chest. It’s quickly extinguished though.
“Any thoughts from the interrogation?”
“Not so much an interrogation as it was a threat.”
Carter only grunts a laugh, tilting the whiskey bottles to read each label. “Someone had to know Mauer was poking around and they didn’t tell us.”
He pauses, his brow raising as he looks from the bottles back to me, “You sure?
Nodding I elaborate, “He has info going back almost a year. There’s no way at least one of the cops in our back pocket didn't know. The question is, why didn’t they tell us?”
“Someone else is paying them off?” he guesses, and his guess is as good as mine.