Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 114647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
***
“Hello?” I answered my phone.
I’d been on the line trying to find Shiloh for the last two hours, yet I couldn’t find her. The women didn’t know where she was. Her boss didn’t know where she was, and her house was empty. I’d even called her brother. Well, the brother that doesn’t live two doors down from me. Sebastian had said that he didn’t know where she was, and if he did know where she was, he wouldn’t tell me because I’d obviously fucked up if I couldn’t find her.
After a frustrating five-minute conversation with the man, I hung up the phone and watched Frozen with Janie. Again.
It wasn’t until I was carrying Janie over to Cheyenne’s house that I heard the high feminine cackling coming from the direction of Jack’s place that was all the way across the compound’s grounds.
Repositioning Janie’s sleeping form on my shoulder, I carried her forward until I could see what was going on.
What I saw made my jaw clench tightly.
Every single one of the mother fuckers were there. They knew I’d been looking for her. I knew for certain that at least Gabe and Elliott knew, since I’d reached them first in the attempt to speak with their wives.
“Ember, truth or dare?” Shiloh half yelled/slurred.
“Truth.” Ember slurred.
“If you were home alone at night and you heard a fart, would you laugh or be scared?”
Snorts from the men, and piercing laughter from the women followed that statement.
“Honestly, I’m pretty sure I’d laugh. Then I’d probably freak.” Ember groaned.
Barely reining in my temper, and most definitely not in a laughing mood, I turned and left the gathering. After two hours of being worried sick, I just didn’t have it in me anymore. I was tired. Exhausted. And ready for all of this bullshit to be over.
Once I got to my place, I laid Janie down in her bed before locking all the doors, windows, and arming the alarm. I brushed my teeth, and then fell into bed with an exhaustion that seeped deep into my bones. I rubbed my eyes with my fists, and contemplated shutting off my AM alarm when the knocking started.
I almost ignored the thumping at the door, but thought better of it when it started to pick up decibel levels. Really needing Janie to stay asleep, I rose out of bed. My bones cracked as I made my way to the door.
I stabbed the keypad’s buttons with the blunt tip of my finger with brutal force. Then I started snapping the locks out of place, and then yanked the door open. I wasn’t surprised to see Sam at the door, and I also wasn’t in the fucking mood. Which I told him.
“What the fuck do you want?” I demanded.
His eyebrows rose at the tone of my voice, but I couldn’t help it. I was mad. And if I wanted to be truthful with myself, a little hurt.
“Got a problem?” He asked with a calmness that made me want to punch the fucker in the face.
“No. I’m fucking tired. You made me get out of bed, and I wanted to sleep.” I answered.
All truthful answers. However, not the total truth.
He knew I was purposefully not telling him everything, but the fucker wasn’t my captain anymore. He could suck my dick.
“Gabe said he saw you walking back to your place. Must not have been that tired.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose in between two fingers, and promised to donate my porn collection to a local youth shelter if God could make my headache go away.
“I’ve got a fucking headache. My body aches from sitting in a straight backed metal chair for four hours, and I’m tired. What. Do. You. Want?”
He studied my face for a few moments before uncrossing his arms from his chest and taking a casual pose against the side of the stucco wall that lined the outside of my house.
“I’m not sure I want my sister mixed up in your shit.”
“My shit?” I asked, completely amazed that he’d brought that up to me.
“Yeah, your shit. I don’t want her hurt. You’ve got all this shit swirling around your life right now, and I really don’t want that to affect my sister.” He confirmed.
I wanted to hurl his own shit back at him. What about all the shit he’d brought on my sister? What about his old man who was more of a goddamn danger than anything that I could bring to his sister’s life?
I stared at him for a few more moments before making the hardest decision of my life.
“Okay.” I nodded, and then stepped back, closed the door, and re-armed the system.
It wasn’t until I was in bed and listening to the storm that’d been threatening the entire day pound at the glass of my window that I finally let the pain of his words roll through me.
Pushing the rioting emotions back down, I contemplated what my next step would be. I knew for sure I couldn’t leave the county. The court, for one, wouldn’t allow me to. I also wasn’t so sure I wanted to leave the place I’d grown up in. To take Janie out of school in the middle of the school year.
That didn’t mean that I had to stay here, where Shiloh would be a constant reminder of what I wasn’t allowed to have. I also didn’t have to stay working at Free. I’d had dozens of job offers since I’d been discharged from the army. I could take the one with the police department easily.
Which if I was being honest, I’d been contemplating more and more lately.
Decision made, I fell into a fitful sleep. Only to awake a little over two hours later with my heart damn near pounding in my chest, and the still warm sensation of my good friend’s blood running hot over my skin.
“Goddammit Dougie. Goddamn you.” I said into the darkness.
***
“What’s going on, daddy?” Janie asked me as I carted a few duffel bags into my mother’s house.
Janie was used to staying here whenever my mother wasn’t working. What was not normal was having me moving my shit in, taking over Cheyenne’s old room.