Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“I don’t talk about my work when it’s in progress.”
“Hogwash,” she fired back. “You talk about it all the time. When did this begin?”
“Nora—”
“I know when it began.”
She probably did.
“Rollo would be devasted,” she announced.
My skin caught fire.
“Don’t you even—” I gritted.
“He’d be torn apart.”
“You have no—”
She leaned in and hissed, “And he’d be pissed as fuck. Live your goddamn life, Mika. Stop hiding behind your love for him. Stop quivering in fear behind his loss. That wasn’t the woman he married. It isn’t you.”
My words were a blaze of fire when I spat, “I’m not doing that. I live my life, Nora. Don’t pretend you don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I do. And you aren’t lying. You have. But now that life could include something more, so now you’re doing it. And you know I don’t lie. You not going after what you want because you’re scared would tear Rollo apart, and you using him as a shield, he’d be furious.”
With that, she stalked out.
And I reached out, sweeping an arm along the workbench, all the photos and papers shuffling together, some falling on the floor.
I gathered them up, stacked them, shoved them in their folder, tucked it out of sight.
Then I went out on my balcony. I jogged down the stairs. I kicked off my shoes. And I walked through my garden, into the desert.
And I kept walking until I pulled it together.
Only then did I head home.
* * *
I lasted until Saturday.
After that, no word, no update, the anger I’d let flow through the soles of my bare feet into the healing earth started building again.
I chose another path to release it this time and grabbed my phone.
I’d like an update on what’s happening with the Winston situation, I texted.
Tom, the jerk, made me wait.
It took him two fucking hours to reply.
We have it in hand. You don’t need to worry about it.
They had it in hand?
They did?
Was he fucking serious?
It’s mine, Tom, I reminded him.
Now who was playing games?
He was.
Nearly forty-five minutes passed before he texted, It’s a family thing, Mika. You know that.
It’s not a family thing. It was sent to me.
I could tell he was getting hot because he didn’t make me wait this time.
He returned, By family.
Not by family. By some PI.
Who was retained by family.
I have a right to know, I shot back.
Be glad you’re out of it.
I’m not glad. I deserve to know what’s going on.
Mika, you’re out of it. It’s what’s best for you.
Says who?
Obviously…me.
You don’t get to make decisions for me, Mr. Pierce.
You’re wrong, baby. I do.
It was the “baby.”
It was totally the “baby.”
Use the word “baby” wrong, and a woman will fuck your shit up.
I did not reply.
I was suddenly on a mission to fuck a man’s shit up.
I stomped to my room. I put on footies. I put on booties. I grabbed my jacket and purse.
And I found my daughter and best friend watching television in the family room.
“God, I hate Carrie,” Cadence was saying.
“Don’t we all, darling. Don’t we all,” Nora replied.
“I’m going into town,” I announced.
Both of them twisted to me.
“To do what?” Cadence asked.
I didn’t quite meet her eyes when I answered, “Tom and I need to have words.”
I might not have met eyes, that didn’t mean I missed their slow smiles.
Whatever.
“I’ll be back soon,” I declared, turned and marched toward the garage.
I still heard Nora’s, “I wouldn’t hold your breath, honey” and Cadence’s giggle.
Argh!
Whatever.
I was out of there.
CHAPTER 12
THE CONFRONTATION
Tom
He was sitting out by his pool. The color he’d selected to light it tingeing the night a deep blue. The firepit was crackling. A whisky was in his hand.
And Tom was brooding.
Brooding.
With whisky.
Jesus Christ, when had he allowed himself to become cast as the lonesome lost?
He threw back some liquor, felt the burn, and his phone went.
That was when he felt his pulse spike, and he liked it.
Even though it’d been nearly an hour since his last text to Mika, he thought the call was her.
He looked at his phone.
It wasn’t.
It was Genny.
Tremendous.
However, she was the mother of his children, she was also his friend, and as such, he always took her call.
“Genny,” he answered.
“Tom, do you have a second?”
He had a fucking million of them.
“What do you need?”
“I just…well, I don’t know how to begin.”
Tom sighed.
He loved her. Would die loving her.
But he was in no mood.
“Begin at the beginning, Gen,” he invited. “I think we’re well past not being able to say things to each other.”
“Okay then,” she began. “Chloe and Judge just left, and she was in a state, because apparently she pulled some shenanigans to hook you up with Mika Stowe, they didn’t work, and you know how she gets when her shenanigans don’t work.”
“Yes. Exactly how your mother got,” he replied, though it wasn’t with irritation. It was with fondness, because no matter how irritating the woman could be, Tom had never known Marilyn Swan to do a thing in the entire time he knew her that wasn’t steeped in love.