Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Nathan
I got you covered.
Easton
Thanks. I’ll remember this as I lay on my deathbed.
If Easton would be one thing, it would be dramatic. Each of us guys dealt with being sick very differently. The younger twins were pretty much the type to disappear into their rooms until they emerged well. I kept to myself, too, and tried every home remedy to get rid of the virus as soon as possible. I didn’t normally have time to be sick. Too much life needed to be tended to, especially now that I was coaching baseball. Evan became an even bigger grump than he’d already been, but he hardly ever got sick. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen him under the weather. He had the immune system of a god. And our Easton became the biggest crybaby in the entire world.
One sniffle and he was convinced he had the deadliest of diseases.
Nathan
Don’t be so dramatic.
Easton
Are you sure you want those to be your last words to me?
Nathan
No. You’re right. I meant to say don’t be so dramatic, you little shit.
Easton
Love you, too, big brother. Bring me home some bone broth from the shop. Mom said she’d make me homemade soup.
Spoiled brat.
Then again, if Mom was making him soup, I’d get some, too. Hopefully with her homemade sourdough bread. The perks of living a few doors down from my mother. She always had something delicious cooking.
I liked taking over the front of the house at the butcher shop. I was better at dealing with the customers than with the pressure of cutting the meat in the back of the house. That was all Evan’s territory, though, and that guy never took a day off. He not only had a perfect high school attendance record but the same was also true at Pierce Butcher Shop. He would only consider taking off if my niece, Priya, needed him for something. He put being a father above everything else in his life.
Now that Priya was sixteen, though, she was in the shop as much as her father, helping as a cashier up front.
“Hey, Uncle Nate,” she said as I walked into the butcher shop. She had a big smile on her face as she finished counting the money in the drawer. We had about fifteen minutes before we opened, and she was already at work with that big ole smile.
Not to be biased, but I had the most beautiful niece in the goddamn world. Priya was the definition of stunning. She looked equal parts like my brother and like her mother, a beautiful Indian woman who she was named after, Priya Patel. My niece’s mother was not in her life at all and signed over full parental rights to Priya when she was born. She said having a child at that age was too much, and she didn’t want anything to do with her.
Evan was able to choose the name for his daughter, and he chose to name her after her own mother because he wanted her to have a piece of the woman he loved, even if it was only by them sharing the same first name.
I felt bad for Priya’s biological mother because she not only missed out on a beautiful daughter but she also let go of Evan, who I was more than certain would’ve loved her forever if given the chance. Then again, they were young, both only eighteen when Priya was born. I tried my best not to judge both parents’ choices. I couldn’t imagine how hard it was to leave and also how hard it was to stay.
Both sides of the coin came with struggles.
Evan just so happened to end up with the greatest gift, too.
“Hey, Squirt,” I said as I walked over to her and wrapped her in a hug. I kissed her forehead. “How goes it?”
“Good. I’m a bit annoyed with you, though,” she warned as she pulled away from me and sassily placed her hands against her hips.
“What did I do this time?” I asked as I checked the display window with all the items we were selling that day.
“Well, you’ve been hanging around the high school a lot more since you started coaching the baseball team.”
“And that’s an issue?”
“Yes,” she said, tossing her hands up in irritation. “A huge issue. I was at lunch the other day when you came in through the cafeteria from the parking lot.”
“And…?”
“And my friends saw you!” she remarked.
My brows knitted together. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was supposed to be invisible when I entered the school.”
“Well, you should figure out how to be invisible because they called you hot!” She shivered as if the idea of me being good-looking was the most disturbing thing she’d ever heard of in her life. “They kept going on about how they’d love for you to coach them in different…ways. I even overheard teachers talking about how handsome you are.”