Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
She laughs and shakes her head. “You have a man who loves you and treats you like a queen.”
“I don’t know if he loves me,” I admit. “He just said that he wants me to be there with him to live with him.”
“So go.” She throws up her hands. “Again, what are you doing here?”
“My life is here.” I get up on my elbow. “But I hate it here,” I tell her. “I hate the noise and the crowds. I hate that I can’t go for a walk in the forest, and I hate he’s not here with me.”
“Oh, you silly girl.” She kisses my cheek before getting up and going to her phone and pulling it out of her pocket.
“What are you doing?” I ask, and she ignores me but puts the phone to her ear. “Baby,” she says, and I know she’s speaking to my father, “you can come upstairs now.” My mouth opens, and I hear the front door open and then close. “We’re in the bedroom.” His footsteps are coming up the stairs.
“Was he really downstairs hiding?” I ask my mother, who just shrugs.
“I left like a bat out of hell,” she says. “He wasn’t going to let me come by myself.”
“Hey,” my father says, coming into the room and looking at me, “what’s going on?” He puts his hands on his hips.
“We are going to need your help to pack stuff.” My mother looks over at him, and I watch his eyebrows go up.
“She’s finally moving down there?” he asks my mother, who nods. “It’s about time.”
“What are you talking about?” I sit up and put my feet on the floor.
“Honey, how in the hell did you think this was going to work with you living here and Gabriel living there?”
“Well—” I start to say, but he cuts in.
“You can’t take his children away from him.”
“I wasn’t taking his children away from him. I live here.” My voice rises.
“Yes, but you love it down there,” he tells me, and I gawk at him. “You are so happy there. Every time you come back home, it’s like you turn all depressed and mopey.”
“I do not,” I defend myself. “I just don’t.”
“You don’t want to be here,” my father states, “so go be there.”
“I have clients here, and I have that big deal I’m working with.”
“So come down on those days and then go back. There is no need for you to be here for weeks on end while he’s there.”
“I wasn’t going to just move in with him without him inviting me there.” I get up and fold my arms over my chest.
He comes to me. “Baby, the man has a child. Do you expect him to leave his child there and come to you?”
“Yes,” I answer selfishly, and my father laughs.
“If he didn’t have Colson, he would be here,” he explains. “Trust me, I know. I asked him.”
“You what?” my mother and I both shout at the same time.
“What?” my father deflects. “I wanted to know where this was going.” He turns to my mother. “She’s having his children. What was going to happen?”
“Don’t you think they should have figured it out?” My mother tilts her head to the side.
“You would think. But him with the ‘I don’t want to pressure her to do anything’ and her ‘I’m independent and I can do things myself,’ where was that getting us?”
“I cannot believe you,” I hiss at him.
“Either way, I’m here, and you have to get packed,” he says as if what he did was okay. “By the way, you’re welcome.” I shake my head and laugh, but still don’t admit he is right. The only thing in my head is getting to him.
34
GABRIEL
“Colson?” I call his name; he looks up from the homework he is doing on the island. It’s something he started doing because of Zara, at first. He used to do it in his computer room, but she kept going over there every ten minutes to check on him. So one day, he brought out his books and put them in the kitchen so she could see him. It kind of stuck, so now he’s just hanging in the kitchen. “What do you want to eat for dinner?” I ask him, looking at the clock on the stove. “I have about an hour before your mother gets here.”
“I think Mom is making dinner,” Colson says, “so I’m good with a snack. How about some banana and peanut butter with some apples?”
Another thing Zara got him used to is snacks before dinner. She would make him all sorts of snacks after school while I cooked dinner. The two of them talked about his day and what he wanted to do during the weekend. The house literally feels dead without her here, like it misses her.