Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Why he’d turned to vodka instead of rebuilding those walls, Jean didn’t know. Maybe there was too much rubble to build atop, but Jean didn’t have to like this solution. If he was this far out from Riko and Evermore and he still couldn’t face what he’d been through or what he’d done, what hope was there for Jean?
“You are supposed to be better,” Jean insisted.
“We are what they made us,” Kevin said. “It is unavoidable.”
Jean went to him and put his hand flat over the top of Kevin’s glass. “Why did you even tell that doctor all of our secrets if you were still going to destroy yourself like this?”
“Coach had me in her office three to four days a week at the start,” Kevin said. “Saying nothing was more maddening than being honest.”
“Dad,” Jean mocked him.
Kevin hunched his shoulders a bit. “That’s—that doesn’t sound right.”
Jean tried to take the glass away, but Kevin caught it with both hands. Jean would have pulled, but Kevin flicked a defensive look at him and said, “I don’t know if I would have survived my transfer without her. But there are days that her words aren’t enough, and I can’t hear her past...” He risked letting go of his glass to tap his fingers to his temple. “Best not to think at all.”
“You are a fool.”
“And what have you told her?” Kevin asked in quiet challenge. The look he turned on Jean said he didn’t need an answer, but Jean still looked away. Kevin let the silence settle between them for a minute, then dug his nails in so hard his knuckles went white. “I can still hear him. Can you?”
“Don’t.” Jean pried Kevin’s hand free and smashed it flat on the island. “We are not talking about him. I won’t. I can’t.”
“Even with me?”
“You least of all,” Jean said. Kevin managed an unsteady frown, but Jean refused to believe him surprised by the rejection. “My words are not safe with you. You have confessed to your doctor, your father, and your team. How long until your truths make it back to mine? You cannot deny it, you ruinous wretch. You told them who broke your hand.” He dug his nails into the back of Kevin’s hand and demanded, “What were you thinking?”
“I have known Jeremy far longer than you have, Jean.”
“It is not just him,” Jean argued. “Cat and Laila were there.”
“You don’t trust them,” Kevin concluded. Jean faltered, and Kevin took advantage of his silence to press on with an impatient, “I can because he does, and because I know how important Dermott is to him. I am not afraid of what she does or does not know about me. She cannot betray him, so she will never betray me.”
Kevin reached for his drink, but Jean grabbed it first. He upended it in the sink, pushed the cup aside to wash later, and took a clean glass down from the cabinet. There was filtered water in the fridge, crisp and cold, but Jean was annoyed enough to fill the glass from the tap.
“Fair is fair,” Kevin said when Jean set it in front of him. “Talk to Betsy.”
“I didn’t agree to that.” When Kevin said nothing, Jean insisted, “You are not my captain or my partner. You cannot make me.”
“Yes, I can,” Kevin said. Unspoken: you cannot refuse me.
“I hate you.”
“Sometimes you do. I don’t care.”
Jean glowered at him, looking for a way out of this, and nearly jumped out of his skin when Cat knocked on the doorframe. She glanced from him to Kevin, gauging the mood in the room, as she held up a slender silver chain. Renee’s cross glinted in the light as it gently spun, and Jean moved to meet Cat at the door. Rather than turn it over to him, she undid the hook herself and reached up to fasten it behind his neck. Jean gave it a gentle tug to check it, but he only managed a “Thank—” before Cat wound her arms around his neck.
She hugged him, slow and fierce. Comfort for surviving this morning’s ambush, he thought, except the bite of her fingers into his shoulders was almost desperate. This was grief, he realized. She’d put the pieces together herself or demanded the truth from Jeremy in his absence.
Jean wanted to shove her away, because how could he ignore this wretched ache if Cat was drawing attention to it? Instead, he dug bruises into her back, knowing he had to be hurting her but unable to let go. She smelled of jasmine and vanilla, not blackberries and sea salt. He latched onto that to keep himself here and now even as his heart wanted to swallow him whole.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t know she was gone.”
Stuart’s bored voice haunted him: “A mild term for it.”