Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 79599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
“Oh yeah?” Bear asked, sounding amused. “Where did you learn that?” His muscles relaxed slightly and the needle moved in and out with more ease making quicker work of putting him back together.
I smiled, recalling the memory. “Dr. Hartman told me that when he fixed up my knee. My brother Jesse and my friend Buck and I were practicing casting the new reels we’d gotten for Christmas one year. Well, they weren’t brand new, but they were new to us.”
“You got water this far inland?” Bear asked.
“Oh yeah, we got a pond in the middle of the grove, deep one too. Every once in a while Mr. Miller used to stock it with stuff he caught on one of his trips to the lake. But that day we weren’t practicing at the pond. We were on dry land, just out back in the clearing. We set up hola-hoops on the ground for targets and weighted down our lines. It was good practice too, but looking back I guess we didn’t need the hooks. I walked a little too close behind Buck when he was about to cast and caught a hook to the knee.” I stretched out my leg onto the front step so Bear could see the long scar that ran from the top of my knee to the bottom. “He didn’t realize he hooked me and kept going, tore the skin and the hook right out of my knee. Twelve stitches,” I said, pulling my leg back.
Bear held out his left hand and pointed to a scar between his thumb and index finger. “Same injury. Different friend. We were probably about sixteen and in this little dingy doing some inshore fishing. If we caught a few red fish sometimes we sold them to one of the restaurants on the other side of the causeway for a few bucks. Sometimes they were just good eating. But the only thing we caught that day was a buzz and about an inch of skin off my hand.”
“I’m done on this side,” I said, biting off the thread and tying it off in a series of unbreakable knots. I rethreaded the needle and knelt on the step to the side of Bear. It was an awkward position that had me almost teetering off the edge and he noticed, because he grabbed my forearms and spread his legs, pulling me in between and resting my elbows on his thighs, he released my arms and his hands came around to rest on the small of my back.
“Better,” he said, looking right into my eyes. I was all too aware of his gaze as I started to close off the wound, which was smaller in the front then it was in the back. He watched me as I worked, the edge of his beard brushed against my skin, his breath warm against my neck sending tingles between my thighs.
I needed to concentrate on my stitching before I hurt him again. “There was a picture in the apartment of you when you were younger. You and King with another boy wearing a bow tie. Was that Preppy?”
Bear leaned forward, resting his nose in the crook of my neck and nodded, his lips and beard setting my skin on fire.
So much for concentrating.
I cleared my throat. “Does he live in Logan’s Beach?” I asked, as I finished the last stitch. The thread was short after stitching both the front and back of his shoulder. I had to close my mouth around the thread, my lips flush against his skin as I cut it with my teeth, resisting the urge to taste him with my tongue, before tying it off like I’d done on the other side. I blew on his skin to ease some of the pain and Bear stood up, catching me before I tumbled down the steps and setting me back onto my feet.
“He’s dead,” Bear said, picking up the bottle of vodka and pouring it over both sides of his wound, hissing between his teeth.
That was the end of our personal conversation, after which Bear turned all business. By the time he’d asked how deep the pond in the middle of the grove was and tested the tractor on the side of the house to see if it was running, I was starting to figure out what he’d meant by ‘cleanup.’
After I watched him tie the bodies of his former brothers to what was left of their bikes and sink them into the pond…I had an even better idea.
* * *
Thia
“Sun’s up soon,” Bear said, looking off into the distance to where the pink had just started to invade the night sky. He pulled out his phone and pushed a few buttons, his lips moving silently as he read something over, shoving his phone back into his pocket when he was done. He hopped down from the tractor and came around to my side, about to help me down.
I rolled my eyes. I’d been jumping on and off that tractor since I was in diapers. Bear stalked toward me, backlit by the rising sun he was dirty, sweaty and muddy to all hell but he was surrounded with a halo of light like he was an angel from hell. “Bethany messaged me. She arranged for you to be questioned by the sheriff at her office in Coral Pines. He wanted to do it tomorrow, but she managed to push him off for another forty eight hours because she wants to meet with you first and go over some things.”
“What kind of things?” I asked.
“Your story,” Bear said. “She wants to make sure you say the right thing and that you know how to answer his questions.”
“What right thing?” I asked, following him around to the side of the house where he unraveled the hose. “I killed my mom after she killed my dad. That’s all there is to it.”
He let out a frustrated sigh and held up the end of the hose with the nozzle, searching for the spigot.