Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
“You haven’t even heard what he wants to talk to you about.”
“Because I don’t care. Look, I really do have to go. I’m sure he can talk to Tammy Lynn.” I didn’t need to go there, but it was worth it.
“Aurora! You don’t understand. I’m sure, I know, you’d like to hear what he has to say.”
I rolled down my window too when the smell of Jackie’s fart didn’t go away fast enough. “No, I don’t. I’d say good luck, but you’re all going to keep making money off what I did anyway, so I don’t need to wish it on you. Please don’t bother calling me again.” I ended the call and sat there and stared down at the darkened screen, surprised and yet not surprised at all at the same time.
I needed to call Aunt Carolina today and tell her. She’d get a kick out of this. I could picture her rubbing her hands together with glee.
Of course Kaden would have his mom call to break the ice. Did they really think I was that dumb or that easy? That I could, or would, ever, in a million years, forget or forgive what they had done? How they’d hurt me?
Covering my face with my hand, I scrubbed it up and down with a sigh and shake of my head. I folded up all of my thoughts and feelings of the Jones family and set them aside. I wasn’t exaggerating. I didn’t care that he wanted to talk or that she wanted him to talk to me or any of it.
“You okay back there?” Clara asked.
I peeked up to see her gaze on me through the rearview mirror. “Yeah. Just got a call from evil incarnate.”
“Who?”
“My ex-mother-in-law.”
Through the rearview mirror, her eyebrows shot up. “She’s evil?”
“Let’s just say, I’m pretty sure there’s a spell somewhere to bind her to another realm.”
* * *
“That was the best day I’ve had in a really long time,” I said, hours and hours later as we were on the way back into town. It wasn’t even full-out dark yet, but I was pretty sure I’d seen my life flash before my eyes at least twenty times. The road from the small, picturesque mountain town was… sketchy was the word.
I thought I’d driven some hair-raising places on the way to Pagosa Springs, but a special section of the road on our trip held no comparison. I hadn’t known until we were leaving the shop that Clara was a menace to society behind the wheel. I was beyond relieved to be in the back seat when we’d done the hairpin turns so I could clutch the door and the edge of the seat for dear life without making her nervous.
But it had totally been worth it.
Ouray had been unbelievably busy with tourists, but I’d fallen in love with the small town that reminded me of something straight out of a town in the Alps or a storybook. Not that I’d ever been to the Alps, but I’d seen pictures. I had gotten sick the one Christmas the Joneses had booked a vacation to go…
They’d gone without me, claiming the tickets were nonrefundable, with Kaden insisting it would break his mom’s heart if he wasn’t there for the holidays. Needless to say, Yuki, being the friend that she was, had sent her bodyguard to pick me up five minutes after they left for the airport and had nursed me back to health over the week at her house.
I should have known then I was never going to be important enough.
They really did deserve that pie of shit.
Anyway.
As cool as the town had been, it had been the company that had made the trip so great.
It had been a long time since I’d laughed so much. Probably since the month I’d spent with Yuki, and we’d been drunk a fourth of the time. A rare thing for both of us.
“Me too,” Clara agreed. She’d filled the trip with stories about some of the regulars I was getting to know at the store. One of my favorites being a man named Walter who had apparently found a bag of what he thought were herbs but was really marijuana and had brewed it like tea for months before someone told him it wasn’t what he’d thought it was. When she wasn’t filling me with gossip, she and Jackie tried to give me all the reasons why I should stay in Pagosa instead of leaving, which had surprised me because I really hadn’t been sure the teenager liked me all that much in the first place. They’d made some interesting points, mostly: you’re home.
Which I was. Home that is.
“I saw you smiling too, Jackie,” Clara went on.
I had spotted her smiling a lot too.
Jackie’s phone beeped then, and the girl grabbed it, reading whatever was on the screen before saying, “Ugh. I thought it was Grandpa. I texted him when we were in Durango, and he still hasn’t texted me back.”