Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Talk about options makes me want to break everything inside that boat.
We were never given options. Not for anything. And he wants to stand there and tell me that things have changed? Everything in me is dying inside. A slow, aching decay. I don’t know how to keep my shit together.
I don’t know if I want to anymore.
“Is that what you think is going to happen?” I ask heatedly. “Phoebe is going to make a clean break and fall in love with the golden boy of the town. Have some babies and live happily ever after.”
Nova has a soft smile, like I painted a happy, blissful future for his sister. “Beats the alternative.”
“Which is?” Say it, you bastard.
He stares at me. “You.”
I shove him. I can’t help it. I just push. He stumbles back, but he doesn’t fall. I’m burning alive.
Nova is kerosene. “You know you wouldn’t be good for her,” he growls. “Don’t get mad at me for saying it out loud!”
I know he’s right.
I hate that he is.
But I just can’t stand to hear it. I shove him even harder, and this time his boots teeter on the edge of the wooden dock. He grips onto my shoulder before he plunges into the water, taking me with him.
All my anger that I was fueling into the boat, I just channel into Nova. We’re wrestling, dunking each other. Drowning one another. Briny water scalds my esophagus. Shoots up my nose. Pierces my seething eyes. Until I feel hands pushing me and him apart.
“Hey, hey! Get the fuck off each other!” Oliver screams. He’s wading in the water with us and trying his best to separate us.
He’s shoving me more than Nova.
I settle down enough to seize the dock and cough up some seawater. Nova’s equally gassed, choking on air.
“Jesus, are you two trying to kill each other?” Oliver asks, swimming to the dock in his suit. He climbs out quickly, white button-down suctioned to his chest.
I don’t say anything, still catching my breath. I spit the salty taste out and push a hand through my wet hair.
Nova pulls himself easily onto the dock and lies on his back. His chest heaves in and out.
Oliver looks between us. “You know, I’ll give you both a free session with me. Therapy would serve you well.”
“I’ll pass,” Nova says gruffly.
Oliver joined a private practice when he arrived in Victoria, and his growing list of regular clients looks like a CVS receipt. The ladies love the sexy new therapist in town. He has no credentials other than watching The Sopranos and our damaged, fucked-up lives for twenty-plus years.
But this isn’t his first time pretending to be a therapist. Probably won’t be the last. And yeah—ethics are bent and warped in every direction, but sometimes we just don’t care about those.
“Rocky?” Oliver asks me.
“I’d rather beat up my boat.”
“Looks like you were beating up my brother.” Oliver isn’t as carefree as he’d have most believe, and I see the thinly veiled threat in his eyes.
“He got caught in the cross fire,” I say tightly while pulling my body onto the dock. Standing and dripping water, I reach out a hand to Nova.
Going head-to-head with Phoebe’s brothers is a tale as old as time. So is the part where we dust off the dirt under our feet and keep trekking along.
Nova rubs at one of his reddened eyes. “Is that your hand?”
And I realize, he lost a contact in the water. Goddammit. I bend down and clasp his forearm, helping him to his feet.
“Thanks.” He plucks the other contact out and blinks repeatedly.
“Does Jake asking about Phoebe even matter, Nova? The moment our parents come to town, everything will change.”
“That’s why I’m asking.” He pinches his eyes and then blinks again. “They’re going to want to know if he’d be a good mark. I’m just figuring out what to tell them.”
I nod. “We tell them Victoria is off-limits. No long cons, for any of us while we’re here. If we all agree, they won’t have enough shills or principals to pull shit off.”
“No long cons?” Oliver thinks, the corners of his eyes creasing in the start of a wince.
“We do that for our sisters,” I tell him. “Phoebe. Hailey.”
His eyes flit sharply to me when I say my sister’s name.
Ignore that, Rocky. I’m trying. “They don’t want to be roped into a job, so we need to make sure they aren’t. Yeah?”
He immediately folds. “Okay. I’m in.” He turns to his brother.
Nova takes a deep breath, dropping his hand from his eyes. “All right.” With another heavy breath, he tells me, “Your dad isn’t the Big Bad Wolf, Rocky. There are no sides here.”
There will always be sides. And I hate the scenario he painted. Because in that situation, we’re the three little pigs in straw houses, trying to protect our fragile, vulnerable lives.