Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86841 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86841 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Gathe grabbed my knee and squeezed it. “Come on. Ease up on him. We all want you back around. I miss you when we are at their house. Something is always missing.”
Bane Cash did not want me around. He was full of shit. I was one hundred percent positive that he didn’t want to subject his wife—how weird did that sound?—to my presence, for fear that reminding her she had once been the other woman would upset her.
“Bane and Halo are on their honeymoon. We are all getting together at the house tonight. Come with me.”
I did not want to go to the house that Crosby had once lived in. He had lived there with Bane, Than Carver, and his older brother, Ransom, along with Oz and Forge Savelle. Now, Bane still lived there with his wife, and they’d turned Crosby’s bedroom into a nursery for their son. I absolutely didn’t want to see that either. Even if they weren’t there right now.
“I like your house better. Why do they always want to go to that one?” I replied.
Gathe gave me a pointed look. “Saylor, seriously? We both know their house is better. It’s just me and Locke at our house. We don’t have the massive place they do, and our pool is inferior.”
Gathe and his brother, Locke, had moved into their grandfather’s house on their family property after he passed away. The rest of the guys had all moved into the mansion the Cash money had bought. When I say the rest, I mean the other sons in the family—aka the Mississippi branch of the Southern Mafia. They were like wolf packs. Always together. Working together. Killing together. It was a part of my life, and I hadn’t felt left out—being not only one of three girls in the family, but also the youngest—because of Crosby, Gathe, and even Than. He had been Crosby’s best friend, but we had formed our own little pack.
That was no longer.
Everything had changed.
My sister was off in Louisiana, living her best married life to a member of the Louisiana branch of the Southern Mafia.
Opal—Than and Ransom Carver’s sister—had attended an all-girl boarding school in Washington DC, then done some internship with a congressman. After that, in college, she’d focused on whatever it was that helped you in politics. She was very hard to relate to or even talk to when she was home for a visit. We had nothing in common other than our families.
Gathe sighed and moved to sit beside me with his legs outstretched almost touching mine, crossing them at the ankles and placing his hands behind his head. “Stay silent then. I’ll just sit here and annoy you.”
I shot him a scowl. He would do exactly that too. Gathe was the best and worst friend at times. I didn’t know what I would have done without him after Crosby’s death, but things were so different now. He knew it, and I knew it, but he kept acting like it was the same. I wanted him to be with the other guys. He enjoyed his life, and I’d kept him from so much of it for months. It was time I found my own way. A life for me. What that was, I had no idea.
“I have plans tonight,” I blurted, surprising myself.
I hadn’t been sure if I was going to go back to the Catholic church, but it seemed that I was. Not just because the priest was hot either. But he was. Very, very hot. It was probably a sin to have naughty thoughts about a priest. I didn’t know the rules and all with religion. That didn’t change the fact that the man was gorgeous though.
“You do?” The shock in his tone was insulting but understood.
When was the last time I’d had plans without him? I couldn’t even remember.
“Yep,” I replied, hoping he didn’t pry, but knowing he was going to.
“Do these plans include leaving the house? Because if not—if you’re going to sit at home and binge-watch some show you’ve seen already and eat an entire bag of Takis—then that doesn’t count.”
He normally sat with me when I binge-watched shows and talked about me eating the taste buds off my tongue with the hot chips I loved.
I shook my head. “Nope. Not doing that. I am leaving the house.”
He dropped his hands and turned to me, looking intrigued now that he knew I had somewhere to be that was without him. “Okay, so what is it?”
We both knew I had no other friends. When you grew up inside the family, with built-in friends, why look elsewhere? I had that answer now though. Because you grew up and things changed. Shit happened.
“I’m going to a meeting, gathering, whatever kinda thing it is where others who have dealt with loss are there and we talk,” I told him since lying about it was pointless.