 by Lani Lynn Vale.jpg)
Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Sometimes you need to crash a funeral to experience happiness.
At least, Kissimmee Singh, aerial artist for Singh Circus, the most sought-after traveling circus of all time, keeps telling herself that’s why she crashes funerals.
In reality, she’s lost and confused. Sometimes it’s nice to experience other people’s grief and be reminded that life isn’t as bad as it could be.
Though attending the funeral of some random old man that died of cancer wasn’t supposed to change her life completely. It does.
With one look at the grieving man and woman, she realizes that this was one funeral she probably should’ve stayed away from.
He’s in a black suit, black undershirt, black gloves, and black shoes. He looks like the devil himself.
When she tries to make a run for it, he follows and demands to know why she’s there.
If she’d known he was going to be trouble, she’d have stayed away. If she’d known that he’d follow her to their next stop, she might’ve tried a little harder to hide who she was. What she was.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she gave him everything in one single night. And will live to regret it.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER 1
I solemnly swear a lot.
-Coffee Cup
SIMI
“I’m sorry, but can you repeat what you just said?”
My sister, Crimson, looked at me like I’d grown two heads.
I sighed. “I know it sounds weird, but something is telling me to go.”
Crimson looked from me to another sister, Val, and back, then shrugged.
“Simi, you’ve done your own thing, your own way, since you made your way into this world.” She grinned. “Pretty much, we have no say in anything when it comes to you. Go to this funeral if it makes you happy. Just don’t get caught by the people celebrating this poor man’s life. It’s just…odd. And we’re here for five days, and the town’s small. I don’t want to be ostracized because you decided to crash a funeral.”
I rolled my eyes. That was my Crimson. She was always the Debbie Downer of the group.
“Anyway,” I said as I gathered my stuff to be dropped off. “It’s time for me to go. Is anyone else going to hang in town?”
“I’m going!” I heard one of my sisters yell. Hades, maybe. It could’ve been Zipporah as well since she was the one to rush out of her bunk onto the bus in the next instant.
“I’m going,” I heard her say.
Hades then.
“Me, too.” Valhalla shouldered her bag.
That’s how the whole entire Singh crew wound up heading to the bus.
It went like this: Keene Day, our oldest brother. Then Valhalla Drew, Crimson Eurie, me Kissimmee Flower, then the twins, Caristionia Blue and Hades Pearl, and the baby of the family, Zipporah Nancy.
Yes, we were aware they were weird names.
Yes, we all hated our names.
No, we’d never change them.
Honestly, we had no clue what my dad was thinking when he knocked each subsequent woman up. Nor what that woman was thinking when they allowed my father to choose the name.
Hell, once we’d asked him what his deal was with the names, and he’d told us it was because his name was so simple he wanted a grand name for us.
All of us loved our dad. Truly, our dad was the best thing to ever grace this earth, and when he passed away last year, our hearts were shattered beyond repair.
It took everything we had to keep this circus up and running.
But we all hated our names. Even Keene.
“This place is so tiny,” I grumbled as I watched “downtown” fly by. “Why are we here again?”
“Because they contacted us, paid the fee, and asked us to come,” Keene answered. “Like you know.”
I looked at my brother.
He was a tall, imposing person.
The years he’d spent in the military before being forced to come home to help us run this freak show had been good—and bad, for that matter—to him.
He was tall, strong, and utterly closed off.
There wasn’t a single thing about him that was the same as the young, wide-eyed boy that’d left the circus to enter the military. The Marines, to be specific.
They’d formed him into a machine that was honestly quite scary when he wanted to be.
But he loved us, protected us, and catered to us like the princesses he wanted us to be, and I loved him for that.
The first stop was the mall, where Care Bear and Val got out. The next was the grocery store where Crimson and Hades exited.
The last to get out was Zip, who pointed at a bookstore.
Then there was me, being dropped off at the edge of the park right next to a conveniently placed park bench.
“Be back in an hour,” he said as I opened the front door. “Sim?”
I looked back just as I was about to close the door. “Yes?”
“Remember that these people are grieving. Don’t be weird,” he ordered.
I grinned at him. “Of course, I won’t be weird.”
He rolled his eyes and said, “Shut the door, weirdo.”
I did, and he peeled out as if he was ready to get rid of us.
He probably was.
At least before, he’d always had my dad to break the estrogen cycles. Now, he didn’t even have that.
He lived on a tour bus with six women who all had their cycles synced together.
Needless to say, if anyone was deserving of a break, it was him.
Parking myself on the bench, I crossed my legs and people-watched until it was time to walk up to the service.
Just as I was about to get up and walk toward the funeral, where they had rows and rows of empty chairs set up, a limo pulled in.
My breath caught at the sight of the suited body that exited the vehicle with a very pretty dark-haired woman who had obviously been crying.
The woman leaned hard on the man at her side, and together, they walked toward the front of the service.
My heart pounded a staccato beat at the sight of him.
But I quickly shut down the thoughts of how attractive he was.