Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Rafael and his guns and henchman seem petty compared to all that, but that’s only because my man got me to safety first. It’s easy to have this perspective when I didn’t have to face it—him—like my man did. Even as they laugh, they’re all looking at him a little distantly, still shell-shocked by whatever violence they witnessed.
I’ll never be scared of him. I know he’s got a beast inside his muscled body, but that’s only for when he needs to use it. There are so many more shades to him than I ever would’ve dreamed.
“What now?” Mike asks.
“Now,” my man replies, “we burn this place to the ground.”
Two Weeks Later
Mom stands at the kitchen counter, fussing with the flowers in the jar. I’m trying my best not to freak because this is the day I promised I would tell her. I promised myself and promised my man—my Jacob. Since coming home, I’ve been mainly staying with Dad, so it’s been no biggie seeing Jacob. He and Angelica have been staying in the guest house, meaning we have the place to ourselves if Jacob comes over. Most often, I’ll go to his apartment. I sleep there a lot, and every night, every kiss feels so natural and right, but I can’t keep putting this off.
Xavier jogs into the room, wearing his full-length Lycra running gear because, apparently, it’s best for maximum efficiency. Mom turns and smiles at him with the same love I feel glowing in me—the love you don’t have to question. It’s the same thing I see when Dad looks at Angelica. True love, we’ve all found it. How much more can we ask than that?
We survived Rafael and that madness. I know I can survive telling my mom.
“Do you need anything from the store?” he asks my mom.
“No, thank you.”
Xavier leaves the room, and Mom keeps fussing with the flowers. Finally, she wipes her hands on her apron and walks over to the coffee machine. I chew my bottom lip and look out the window. It’s a steely-blue sort of day, with no sign of snow.
“Coffee?” Mom asks.
“Uh, sure.”
“Are you okay?” she says. “You seem a little… not yourself.”
That’s an understatement. Every day since the cabin has changed me. Nobody knows what happened out there in the snow. Jacob’s cleanup crew—an ex-military mercenary firm that specializes in high-end corpse disposal because that’s a thing, apparently—got rid of the bodies. We stood in the snow, watched the cabin crackle and burn, and then we came home. Angelica came with us. Isabell lives in an apartment in the city where Jacob has put her up. It’s like I’m building this whole second life separate from Mom.
She doesn’t demand an answer and continues with the coffee, giving me time to work up to it. All I need to do is start. Once I make the first move, I’ll know where to go naturally from there, but getting over that hurdle is difficult. I can tell Dad still finds it a little weird, but he lived through the cabin. He saw how much Jacob loved me—loves me. Not that we’ve used that word. Mom saw none of that. It would come out of nowhere.
Mom has always been there for me, just like Dad. Their problem was with each other, not me, though I could never imagine leaving Jacob. I know it’s forever. We’ve said that. “Forever,” whispered when our bodies are intertwined, when we get that melting-together feeling we’ve both talked about, like our hearts are becoming one. I can’t ever imagine leaving him or him leaving me. I can’t imagine being without him.
Mom places my coffee down and sits opposite me at the kitchen bar. Her hair has a purple bow, making her look somehow younger. She’s never pressured me about anything, but I know she wants grandkids one day. She’s made jokes about it, but they’re not really jokes. I see the excitement in her eyes.
Maybe that’s the route I should take, but is that fair? Jacob and I talk about the future, but we don’t go into much detail. It’s more him huskily saying it as I cling tightly to him toward the end of a shared crescendo or me moaning it into his ear as we rock together.
“I want your mother’s blessing,” he said the other night.
“Blessing for what?”
He was standing in the kitchen, holding a frying pan, somehow making the act of frying steak look so manly and handsome. My body was still sore from where he’d spanked me, doing it in that obsessive, hungry way he has, like he can’t stop himself.
“For being with you,” he said, turning away, but I could sense more. Yesterday, I caught him and Dad talking, looking suspicious, giving me major cabin vibes. That’s what I’ve started calling it whenever my suspicious alarm starts going off.