Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 111685 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111685 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
He was saying that all imposing-like. Two days ago I would’ve considered his face smirking and arrogant and pompous, but now I saw the thinly veiled concern.
He stood and straightened away from the counter. His eyes flashed, dropping from my face. “Listen. You have a concussion, and that shit’s no joke. That means ensuring you have the least amount of stimuli as possible. After today, no homework. No phone. Try to keep the television stuff to a minimum. I feel bad that I even invited you to watch a movie with me last night. Just until you’re okay to travel, stay put. I already cleared everything with your job and your college. They all know the deal. If you want it, they said you could take a leave of absence for the first semester and there’d be no penalty or impact to your tuition or your GPA.”
My heart sank. I’d already lost so much, I couldn’t lose a semester of school.
“No way.”
I’d have to restart all over again. I could only handle so many restarts. “I can’t do that.”
“You lost your father. You lost your stepmother. I know you still haven’t called your stepbrother yet. You are barely managing to get through a day here. And yeah, your job called me, said some bullshit that you’d be in tomorrow. I told ’em to fire you if you tried that shit again.”
“What? Stone, you can’t—”
“I can and I will!”
I was wrong. It was evident we were back to the ‘I hate you’ phase.
I shouted, “Why is this your business?!”
He didn’t answer, his face twisting, his mouth snapping shut. He stared at me, something fierce flashing in those eyes until he backed down. I felt it in the air. He eased back and I was at a loss. What just happened here?
But he was saying, more quietly, a lot more restrained, “Your lawyer. Then the stadium. If you’re hungry, we can stop and grab food on the way back. You need to head to your house, pick up anything left there?”
Maybe it was the concussion, but I wasn’t able to keep up with him. He was soft, hard, soft, hard, and yeah. Were we now not back to the ‘I hate you’ stage? Damn, this revolving door was making me dizzy.
I slunk down in my chair, suddenly more exhausted than I’d ever felt. “I thought you got all my stuff?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just asked those girls to pack a bag. We can swing by, make sure you have everything you might need. Then after that, your ass doesn’t leave this house. It’s my one day I can drive you around, so I’m offering to make a pit stop.”
Yeah. Okay. But he was already walking out of the kitchen.
Chapter Eighteen
There was no house.
I gaped at the lawyer. He was all trussed up, a black suit, black tie. Even a black suit jacket. Black briefcase. Black shoes. Black fucking socks. The only thing not black was the shirt. That was a cream color and I knew the quality was expensive. And there was not one iota of hesitation as he nodded to my question.
“Indeed, Miss Phillips. Your father was behind on his mortgage for the last year. He was going into foreclosure. We’d already had a meeting the week before…” Now he seemed to remember to be human, hesitating, “before the accident.”
I had no words. Nothing. This wasn’t as bad as when we lost the house the first time because of my mom’s chemo treatments, but it seemed similar. No. It seemed worse. I had Dad with me then.
Stone leaned forward, sitting next to me. His leg pressed against mine, and he left it there. His elbows went to his knees. “What was owed on the house?”
“Seventy-five percent of it.”
I sucked in my breath.
I had no idea they owed that much on it.
Stone gazed at me. “You want the house?”
The lawyer straightened. “Mr. Reeves, I don’t know…”
“No.” I was thinking, concussion be damned. “If you take the house back, what do they still owe?”
He hesitated again, the second time acting like a human. “They still owe us a hundred thousand. They took out a second loan to pay for some items for her son, I believe.” His mouth pressed in before he said, “There’s no money for you. There was a small amount they set aside for Jared, a fund that Gail had separate. His father’s not in the picture, correct?”
I nodded. “Uh. Yeah. She never talked about him. I don’t think he had parental rights to him. But I wasn’t around that often. I was at college, then I moved here. Jared never mentioned him either. It was a secret. I guess. I never thought to wonder about it.”
He frowned, pulling out some papers from his briefcase. “Paternal rights were taken away when Jared was two. There was a domestic abuse issue.”