Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“And I’m not going to apologize for it.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
The silence stretched out, long and painfully obvious. I suddenly wished for LA traffic, the sound of horns blaring and people swearing and music pumping. Anything to fill the empty space. Anything to keep me from asking myself–was I asking him to? It wasn’t that I blamed him for being born into a wealthy family. It was more complicated than that. My father was rich, too, but I hadn’t grown up like Julian had. No birthright in the family business, no million-dollar houses, no trips to Aspen. I’d been born adjacent to it, and that made it worse somehow. But I didn’t want Fletcher’s money. I completely understood why my mom took the pittance he offered–she hadn’t slept with him for money. She hadn’t gotten pregnant for a payout. Her pride wouldn’t let her go after what the courts would have awarded her. I was proud of her. Happy with the way I grew up.
And yet.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “It’s just…strange for me, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Because you learned how to drive in the snow in Aspen,” I shrugged helplessly and laughed a little at how dumb it sounded. “And I didn’t.”
Julian didn’t laugh. He reached over and put his hand, palm up, on my leg. I put mine in it and felt the last of the tension drain away. It took another thirty minutes to reach the commune, and when we got there, we weren’t sure we were in the right place. It was just a barren collection of long, low stone buildings with steeply pitched roofs thickly caked with snow. We pulled into a small lot that had been plowed but was already filling back up again.
“Fuck me,” Julian muttered, peering out the windshield. As soon as we turned the windshield wipers off, the snow rapidly patterned over the glass. The view was blocked entirely within a minute, and the car was plunged into a watery gray twilight.
“He’s expecting you?” I asked nervously, lowering my window a few inches to knock some of the snow off. A sharp wind cut in through the crack, bringing a flurry of snowflakes in with it. I hurriedly closed the window again. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but it was enough to make anyone freak out a little. Except Julian, who looked completely fine.
“He’s expecting me,” he replied, pushing his arms back into his heavy winter coat.
“And you’re sure this is the right place?” I pressed. What if these buildings were abandoned, and we were risking getting stuck out here in the middle of a snowstorm for nothing?
By way of answer, Julian showed me the email from Callum’s agent on his phone and then nodded toward the GPS. “This is the right place.”
Reluctantly, I shrugged back into my jacket, too. By the time I got it zipped up, Julian had come around to my side of the car. I held onto his arm as I climbed down from the Chevy Tahoe. By now, the icy sensation of snow seeping through my shoes, socks, and jeans up to my calves was as familiar as it was unwelcome. I slogged through, holding onto his arm for balance, the two of us taking turns staggering and catching each other.
From the rugged, rustic look of the place, I wasn’t sure what to expect when we finally stumbled through the door, kicking powdery white snow into what turned out to be an enclosed shoe room. Parkas hung on knobs along the short wall, and there were snow boots lined up beneath them. We struggled out of ours, showering the floor with more snow. When I managed to get my boots off, I stepped down into half an inch of snow. Luckily my feet were already numb, but the rest of me wasn’t. I was shivering violently by the time we stepped into the interior room.
The warmth of the place hit me like a wave, prickling through my windburned cheeks. My fingers and toes couldn’t feel it yet, but I exhaled with relief. It took a few moments to realize that we had just walked right into Callum O’Conner’s living room. He was sitting at a small desk that looked like he’d taken it from a one-room schoolhouse, his back ramrod straight because the back of the chair was lined with thin, brittle spindles and stopped short of his shoulder blades. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms that were surprisingly strong. He must do more than jab away at that old-fashioned typewriter all day to have muscles like that.
I took all this in before I got to his face and saw that while he might have been expecting us, he hadn’t expected us to barge right in.
Julian realized half a second before me, because he was already saying smoothly, “Apologies, Callum. I didn’t realize this was your house.”