Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
“What?”
“We’ve been kind of seeing each other.”
“You’ve what?”
“Um, I think you should take this into the study, I’ll leave you guys alone.”
“No, stay. I wanna hear this. How long?” She gripped my hand to keep me in place, and I could feel the tremble in hers.
I thought this was what she wanted, but from the way she was acting, I couldn’t be sure. “Ten years, give or take.”
“What did you say?”
“Now, Alyssa.” That was her brother Cam, who was almost out of his seat. What the hell were they expecting to happen?
“Wait, did you say ten years?” I asked. Maybe I had heard wrong; I thought he said days
“You knew? All of you knew?” She looked around at her brothers, who were all nodding.
“Not that they were seeing each other, but that they were on speaking terms.”
“And no one thought to tell me.”
“We wanted to wait until you were older until you were settled.”
“Where are you going?” Her mother called out to her when she stood from the table and walked away.
“I’ll take care of her.” I got up to follow, not even sure what the hell was going on.
She walked into our bedroom and threw herself onto the bed, pulling the covers over her head. “Tell them to leave.”
“Alyssa!” She pulled the covers down from her face, and the look on her face made me change my mind about what I was about to say.
“I’ll take care of it.”
GARRETT
Her family were all standing around looking nervous when I walked out of the room. “How is she?” Brian, who always seemed to take the lead when it came to anything to do with his little sister, was the first to ask.
“She wants me to ask you to leave; all of you.”
I thought, as the newcomer, I would feel uncomfortable doing that because, contrary to what the world thinks, having money doesn’t make you void of human emotion, but I didn’t feel any way at all. It’s what she wanted, and that’s all that mattered.
Brian and her Dad started to walk forward, and I held my hand out to stop them. “We can’t leave with things like this.” Her brother seemed hurt, and I’m pretty sure he was contemplating trying to get through me to get to her.
Since I wasn’t about to brawl while she needed me, I did my best to de-escalate the situation.
“Is that your wife?” I pointed at Daisy which made him look at me questioningly.
“Yes!”
“Does she have a brother? Family?”
“Yes, what’re you getting at?”
“If she asked you to do something and one of them tried to stop you, would you let them?” His entire body deflated, and I almost felt sorry for him.
“Can you at least tell us how she is? Is she mad or hurt?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, what is she doing? Did she say anything?” This time, it was Cam who asked.
“She’s not doing anything. She just got into bed and pulled the covers over her head.” They all grumbled and looked even more panicked. “Fuck!” Brian exclaimed while looking as if he wanted to get by me anyway.
“What?” Now, they were making me nervous.
“She’s hurt!”
“How can you tell?”
“If she was mad, she’d be doing her nails or her hair, maybe even humming.” Trey looked like he wanted to cry.
“I’ll take care of her, don’t worry. I give you my word.” I tacked on the last bit because they didn’t look convinced, and I guess I can see why they were having a hard time with that. They didn’t know me, and they were worried about her. Another time, I’ll appreciate the fact that they cared so much about her, but right now, she was all I cared about.
“Listen, I gotta get back to her. Someone will see you out.” I saw my valet, yes, I still have one, enter the room behind them and nodded my head in his direction. He’d know what to do. I had prepared a going away package for each of them before all of this went down.
It was just a way to thank them for being at my wedding and also enough information on our honeymoon itinerary to put their minds at ease. I’m not so dense that I wouldn’t know what was going through their minds, and since she cares about them, I see nothing wrong with going the extra mile to make them comfortable, especially her parents.
I’m a relative stranger who was taking their sister and daughter out of the country, far away from everything and everyone she knows. At the time, I figured the more I could do to put them at ease, the better. Now, I’m not so sure she would approve.
I didn’t wait for them to leave before going back to the bedroom, where she was still buried under the covers. I wasn’t sure what I should do for her, so I just went with my gut and kicked off my shoes before climbing in beside her.