Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 95906 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95906 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
That's where I was at now, mentally speaking anyway.
I wasn’t okay. I hadn’t been for a really long time. I’d just gotten really good at pretending I was.
I’d long ago eased myself out from beneath Micah's warm body and had taken refuge in a broken-down old armchair in the corner of his room as thoughts of how to move forward had plagued me. I’d grabbed my phone when I’d moved to the chair, but I’d spent the better part of an hour trapped in a cold sweat as I toyed with the device.
I knew what I needed to do but I was also scared to death. I glanced down at my phone and it suddenly hit me how tired I was. I was in the best shape of my life and yet it felt like every muscle in my body was stretched too tight. My heart was pounding frantically in my chest and drawing in one breath after another actually hurt.
I found the number I needed and then shut my eyes as I pressed it and put the phone to my ear.
Not surprisingly, my brother didn't sound at all tired despite the late hour. I'd spoken to King multiple times since I’d left the city, but I’d kept our conversations brief and limited to business. He’d inquired a few times about Micah and the kids, but I’d deliberately kept my responses short and nondescript.
A fact I was beyond ashamed of now.
“Can you talk?” I asked.
“Yeah,” King responded.
“You still in LA?”
“We took off about twenty minutes ago.”
King and his team had been working a job there, but I’d received the text that they’d succeeded in their mission just hours before Micah and I had gone to bed. And while I didn't know where he was headed next, I knew it wouldn’t matter once I said what I needed to say.
So that was exactly what I did.
“I need to see you,” I whispered.
King was quiet for all of two seconds before he said, “I’m on my way.”
I spent the next several hours just watching Micah sleep. When a pair of headlights flashed briefly in the window, I forced myself to stand on shaky legs and went to search out my sweats. I dragged them on and then leaned down to press a kiss to Micah's temple before leaving the room.
King was waiting by the front door when I went to open it. He had a key to the house but I figured he’d foregone using it in deference to the fact that I wasn't alone.
It hurt to see my brother again. Not in a painful kind of way, but a sad one.
How long would I have let blind anger tear at my relationship with this man? This brother who hadn’t shared my blood but who’d been a part of me from the moment we’d first met.
If Micah hadn't come into my life again, if he hadn't shown me what it meant to forgive, what it meant to cherish the people you had in your life for as long as you could, because come tomorrow, they could just as easily be gone, would I have even been able to see past my pain and anger?
I stepped back and opened the door wide enough for King to enter and then motioned toward the kitchen. I went to turn the lights on, then thought better of it and said, “Beer?”
“Yeah,” King said. I grabbed two beers and then led King to the back porch. I handed him his beer and then sat down on the top step.
“Pilot give you any trouble about changing his flight plan?” I asked.
King grunted. “With what Luca pays the guy and his copilot to fly a top-of-the-line private jet all over the world?”
While Luca and Vaughn had come from money, Lex, King, and I hadn’t, and although Lex and I had found wealth on our own, King abhorred money. He always had. Hell, if we’d known Luca and Vaughn had been “richies”—a term King had coined when we’d been younger—when we’d first met the brothers, we never would have challenged them to that one basketball game that had changed everything.
King walked down the steps and stopped at the bottom and leaned against the banister. I could feel his eyes on me, but I couldn't look at him. I tried to focus on the chirping crickets that broke the stillness of the darkness around us, but their rhythmic calls to one another did nothing to ease the pain in my soul.
“I should've trusted you,” I said.
Not surprisingly, King didn't respond, but I knew his entire focus was on me and what I was saying. It was the reason Lex had chosen him to confide in and not me. I got that now. Although King was just as protective of Lex as I was, he was more apt to listen to the entire situation that was happening before acting, whereas once I heard that something was wrong, I was automatically trying to figure out how to fix it.