Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“Oh. Okay,” I agreed. “But can he maybe… act like a car service? Megs will be suspicious if he doesn’t.”
“Yeah, he’ll do that.”
“Wait. Does he look like you?”
To that, Miko shrugged as he did something on his phone. A second later, a man’s voice came from it.
“Why are you video calling me?” Nero, I assumed, asked.
“Say hi to Max,” Miko said, turning the screen to face me.
My immediate instinct was to look away, to hide my face, suddenly insecure about the bruises, even if I’d just spent the past few days not giving a shit who saw me.
“Camera’s off on our end,” he said, seeming to read my mind. Which was both endearing and worrisome.
I wasn’t easy to read.
That was my thing.
Being a closed book.
How was he able to read me so easily?
“Um… hi, Max,” Nero said, looking at the screen as he walked around his apartment. “Wish I could say it was nice to see you, but, well…”
If you really looked, yeah, you could definitely see the family resemblance. Maybe it was just my feelings for him that made me feel that way, but I thought Miko was hotter. Though, to be fair, Nero was younger. And everyone knew that guys just managed to get hotter year by year.
“I have to know, is your brother’s stubbornness a family trait?” I asked.
“Miko? Stubborn? Think you’re talking about one of the other brothers.”
“Um, hi, I’m here too,” Chuck said, clearly wanting to be included.
“Who is that?”
“No one you need to know about. Alright. I’m hanging up. Clear your schedule for tomorrow. Then swing by here to get the car ready.”
“I might have had plans tomorrow, y’know,” Nero said.
“And now you have different plans. Get some sleep. Gonna be a long day of driving.”
With that, Miko hung up.
“What?” he asked, catching me shooting small eyes at him.
“I refuse to believe that your family doesn’t consider you stubborn.”
“I’m pretty go-with-the-flow, actually. You wanna meet stubborn, I can introduce you to some guys. Or, you know, show you a mirror,” he teased, shooting me a knowing smile.
“How come I couldn’t say hi to your brother?” Chuck asked.
“Because no one is supposed to know you are here,” Miko told him.
“Oh, right,” Chuck said, shoulders slumping.
“Listen, when this shit is done, I will go with you to the fucking wax museum, okay?” Miko said, looking pained at the very idea, but willing to do it for Chuck.
He probably really was a good brother.
Which meant he would almost certainly make a great father.
Wait, what?
Why the hell was I thinking shit like that?
“What’s got that look on your face?” Miko asked, frowning at me as he reached to take my empty bowl away.
“What? Oh, nothing,” I lied. One look at Miko’s face said he didn’t believe me.
But he was right about one thing.
I was stubborn as fuck.
And there was no way in hell I was going to let him know that I was suddenly imagining him holding a baby. Maybe even… our baby.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Miko
I won’t lie; I was actually kind of relieved that by the time Chuck went to bed and Max and I cleaned up the epic fucking mess he made of my kitchen, Zeno still hadn’t gotten back to me about anything.
Even if that went against everything I thought I knew about myself. Namely, that work was just about the most important thing in the world, behind my parents and siblings.
Nothing else, not even a woman, got in the way of work.
Then again, none of the women in the past were Max.
Even as I thought that, I glanced over to find her already watching me. Her gaze quickly fell, but not before I saw the mix of confusion and warmth on her face.
It was strange to be in a position where I was the one more in touch with my feelings, more determined to explore what was between us.
That said, it made sense.
Sure, my work forced me to be able to compartmentalize, to tamp down anything personal for the better of the organization. But I had come from a happy, loving family. I knew how to love and be loved.
Max, on the other hand, had all of the hard shit in life and none of the soft. Yeah, she had Megs. And she definitely loved her and was loved in return, but there was a certain level of anxious attachment in that relationship for Max. She thought that if or when Megs was ready to move on with her life, she would be all alone in the world again. There was no part of her that seemed to realize someone else could ever love her.
“Max,” I called, watching her look over, features guarded.
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you something about your past?”
“Well, you can ask,” she said with a shrug.
“I know about your time on the streets alone and then meeting Megs. But… you’ve never talked about before then.”