Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
“Okay,” she whispers. “But when I’m in town for Thanksgiving, I always help my mom cook, and I like doing that with her.”
“That’s fine. My parents normally host, and people show up when they can. We can spend the day with your parents, then go to my parents’ in the evening for dessert.”
“Your mom won't be upset?”
“First, I see my mom more than just one day out of the year, and second, she has girls. She loves having my sisters in the kitchen with her, so she’ll understand that your mom wants that time with you.”
“Okay,” she agrees softly.
“I gotta get up and ready to go. You want me to start some coffee for you, or are you going to stay in bed for a little longer?”
“I think I might doze until my alarm goes off.”
“All right, baby.” I brush my lips across hers, then get up and head to the bathroom.
When I come out a while later, she’s asleep and has dragged my pillow down the bed and wrapped her arms around it. After I get dressed, I take a seat on the edge of the mattress and slide the hair that has fallen into her face back behind her ear before I rest my hand on her hip and squeeze.
“Oli.”
“Mmm?”
“I’m going to take off, baby.”
“Okay,” she mumbles, and I smile.
“Kiss me before I leave.”
Leaning up, she tips her head back without opening her eyes, and I slide my fingers back into her hair and kiss her, sliding my tongue across her bottom lip. When I start to pull back, she grasps the front of my sweatshirt, preventing my retreat, and opens her mouth under mine. I lose myself in her taste and the feel of her beneath me for a long fucking moment before I force myself to slow the kiss and pull back.
“Message me when you wake up.” I nip her bottom lip.
“Okay.” She snuggles back down into the bed.
Tucking the blanket up around her shoulder, I get up and call Gemma, who is still snoozing at the foot of the bed, and she follows me out of the room. I stop in the kitchen long enough to feed both her and Ira and to make myself a to-go coffee. Then I lock up the house and walk to my truck, opening the door for Gemma to get in. The sun is barely up as I head out of my neighborhood, and I make it to work with time to spare.
As I’m parking, my cell phone rings, and I frown when I see it’s my sister Nalia. Not that she never calls, but she’s in Colorado, putting her a couple of hours behind me. I get out of my truck, and Gemma immediately hops out and runs up to the house while I answer the call and press my cell to my ear.
“Hey, everything okay?”
“Well,” she says quietly, “define okay.”
“What happened?” I mutter, walking back to the bed of my truck.
“First, I need you to promise that you’re not going to tell Mom and Dad before I have a chance to talk to them.”
“What happened?” I repeat, unwilling to promise shit because if she’s in trouble, our parents need to know.
“Bax, please just promise,” she says softly, and my gut gets tight. From the moment she and Sage came to live with us, she had all of us wrapped around her finger. Even though she and Sage were the same age, she was the baby, and I still see her as the little girl she once was.
“All right.”
“A couple of days ago, Sharon was arrested,” she says, and I stop in my tracks. “She was caught with meth, and she apparently had enough on her that they are assuming she was dealing.”
“Assuming?” I grit out. Sharon is her birth mom, the woman who lost custody of Sage and Nalia when they were just two because she left them at home alone while she went out and partied. When Nalia was old enough, she went looking for Sharon, and for some fucked-up reason that neither I nor any of our siblings understands, she decided to move to Colorado to be closer to her once she found her.
“Okay, not assuming. They know that she was selling, which means she’s going to jail for a while.”
“Come home,” I bite out, and the phone goes quiet.
“I have Zuri with me.”
Shit. My eyes slide closed. Zuri is Sage and Nalia’s youngest sister. I think she’s around seven now, but I could be wrong. I don’t know much about Sharon’s other kids, and Nalia never shares much about them, nor her and Sage’s birth mom, because she knows it’s a topic that tends to piss Sage off—or at least the topic of Sharon does. “I want to come home and bring her with me, but we’re going to need a place to stay while I find a job and an apartment. I know Mom and Dad would let us live with them until I figure things out, but I don’t want to ask them, and I don’t know that Zuri would be comfortable at their house.”