Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“I think you mean real married,” my bratty sister points out far too smugly. She thinks this is great. She has this idea that this is all going to work out fine. She goes and proves that by sighing and fluttering her lashes at Darby. “This feels like a fairy tale.”
“I wanted to wear old stained sweats covered in paint and grime and a tank top with no bra,” Darby states flatly. “But I had too much self-respect to let myself show up to my own wedding like that.” Her eyes rake over my attire, and I swear there’s a light that goes on in their depths when she takes in my black suit. Then, she lowers them beneath lashes I never realized were so thick. “I’m glad I went thrift shopping yesterday evening and found this instead. I would have been quite underdressed otherwise.”
“Gah, you found that at a thrift store? You lucky bish,” Kitty gushes.
“I apologize for my sister and her use of the word bish,” I tell Darby. My head is really pounding now. I’m going to be lucky if I get through this damn ceremony.
“That’s okay. Bish is a good thing.” Darby grins at Kitty. She likes her, I can tell, but then there aren’t many people who don’t like my sister. She might be tiny, but holy god, is she mighty. Growing up the way we did, she didn’t have much of a choice in turning out that way. Then again, she could have turned out like me, but thankfully, she’s about as far away from me as you could get. I guess that was what growing up with our mother and not with our father did for her. He was the key to the whole sordid picture.
My left hand, which usually never hurts, actually throbs. It’s phantom pain. I know it’s not really there. I’m just thinking of the bastard who sired me, and underneath the prosthetic that I paid a fortune for, I can feel myself wrapping my fingers around that hot poker and seeing the smug bastard’s face above me as tears of pain streamed down my cheeks.
You’ll think of me whenever you look at this, boy. Think of me and all the valuable lessons I taught you. Spoiler alert: my father wasn’t very fatherly. Actually, he was a right bastard and about every other curse word in the book, but I don’t have time to get into a stream that long and filthy when we’re already running late.
“I—uh—I guess let’s go get married then,” Darby whispers. She sounds so uncertain. She looks so uncertain. But I’ll take uncertainty over anything else. Unfortunately for me, when she raises her eyes back to mine to give me a shy, sweet smile, I see the one thing I hoped like hell I wouldn’t see. Hope. It’s all shiny and vapid there, and I can’t take it. I can’t stomach it.
And, oddly enough, my dick likes it. Even with the nasty memories, banging headache, churning gut, and stressed out shite I have going on. This is an agreement, nothing more. I can’t have her walking around with stars in her eyes or whatever people call it, even if she does look extraordinarily beautiful right now, with her eyes being her best feature.
“Fake married,” I clarify.
“Very real married,” she shoots back.
“Very real, very fake married,” Kitty croons. “Sounds like a good song title.” She walks over and punches me on the shoulder, but she’s looking at Darby. “Enjoy your last few minutes of freedom, sissy-in-law. You’re about to be married to my beastly big bro. God have mercy on your soul.”
“Where are we doing this?” Darby mumbles instead of rising to my sister’s baiting. That’s a good sign. I think. “The house is really nice, by the way. Homey. I expected something modern like the office, but I like that it’s comfortable and lived in.”
“My brother always wanted—”
I cut Kitty off by tousling her dark hair, messing it all over the place. Kitty screeches then shuts her mouth abruptly and looks at me like she might have set off the hounds of hell on everyone. She gives me a foul look and stalks out of the hallway, ducking into the bathroom to deal with her hair. She had it swept back in a braid, and today, she’s wearing a black dress. Not the kind of thing you’d go clubbing in, but something classy. And not work attire either. More like what you’d wear to a funeral. I guess maybe she does have the right idea about this, no matter how much romantic crap she spouts off about fairy tales and blah, blah, blah.
“The living room.” I didn’t shut the blinds in there because I thought it would be too weird to plunge the room into darkness in the middle of the morning. Before we head in, I take a pair of aviator-style sunglasses out of my suit jacket pocket and slide them on. They are tinted very darkly, and my head feels about two grains of sand in a whole dessert of blistering pain better.