Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
“Protect them, I know,” Rocky says, glancing briefly, almost painfully, to me before dragging his harsh gaze across the coffee table and our soggy bowls of cereal. “We’ll all need to get together. Safe location. The six of us will pick the place. You can pick the time. We’ll talk more then.”
“Okay. I’ll confer with your mom and Elizabeth.” At this, they hang up, and neither of us releases any breaths this time.
There is no relief. Just a tsunami of uncertainty and doubt, and the wave is cresting over our heads, threatening to envelop us whole.
He taps the phone in his palm, thinking. “When we first drove here, I thought about how unfamiliar Connecticut is to me, but I couldn’t be sure. Now…I’m almost certain. We’ve never pulled a con in this state before.”
“But maybe our parents have,” I realize.
There are very few reasons to avoid an entire state like the plague, and one of the greatest is a con gone wrong or a job so big that you can never go back.
Only, Elizabeth and Addison showed their faces at the country club. They appeared there for the rainmaking job.
A short con.
In hopes of getting us to leave Connecticut faster? If they think we’re pulling some lengthy, drawn-out scam here without them, then yeah, it’d be a good ploy to draw us back and get us to pack our bags.
Rocky peers over his shoulder toward my bedroom, then to the deserted hardbacks on the bistro table. “Hailey is always five steps ahead of us, Phebs. If she’s digging into Connecticut, into Victoria, then she must believe it’s all connected. Who we are and why we’ve never pulled a con here.”
I scrunch my face. “Doesn’t it seem too coincidental? That out of everywhere, we just so happened to stumble on the one place that could tell us about our births?”
Rocky leans back beside me. “I don’t care if it is or isn’t. If this state has even a single answer to what our parents are hiding about us, then I want that truth.”
Clarity.
That sounds like real relief to me. I nod a few times. “Yeah, I do, too.”
SEVEN
Rocky
I’ve hated it here, but Victoria isn’t special. I’ve hated it everywhere I’ve ever been for the past twenty-some years. But as I wake up on a lumpy sofa with a blue-haired girl asleep on my chest, with the TV paused on Leatherface and rain beating the panes of a foggy window, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.
No one else I’d rather hold. No one else I’d rather love than my Phoebe.
My lips tic in a slight smile. I remember our childhood. Where we claimed each other like we knew we’d fall in love eventually. My Phoebe.
Being sentimental is for the fucking fools, and I feel myself being grossly sentimental over her. I can’t stop it. I don’t even really want to.
Preserving this, protecting her—it consumes my waking thoughts. It’s to the point where I’d claw through stone to keep her and rip apart any fucker who tries to take her from me.
“Mmmhmm,” Phoebe moans while her eyes fight the morning light.
Not wanting her to shift off my body, I skate my fingers through her hair. Over and over. As I continue the melodic movement against her scalp, her limbs slacken, and she falls back to sleep.
Dipping toward her, I press a kiss to her head. I have her. In my arms. Amid a lot of bullshit and torment in our lives, this is the one reassuring feeling.
I have Phoebe.
For now.
It’s fear. That with any wrong turn, I could lose her. At any moment.
Fear is just a monster created by another monster. My father. So how much of it is real and how much of it is just him manipulating me?
Before I let him ruin this quiet, warm moment in my brain—someone else does. A knock raps against the door, and Phoebe jolts at the same time I sit up.
Our foreheads bang.
“Shit,” I curse, while she says, “Ow, fuck.”
I clutch her head protectively, kiss the reddened spot, and stand fast to answer whoever the hell is on the other side of the fucking door. It’s not even eight a.m.
“Don’t your brothers have keys?” I ask her.
She’s on my heels, following. “Yeah, they do. Nova made copies.”
“Breaking one of your landlord’s pointless rules,” I mention.
“Don’t tell Jake that,” Phoebe warns. “He’s already upset about calling off my fake relationship with him—”
“Which he hasn’t done yet,” I cut in, just as we hear another three knocks. They sound less aggressive. More polite.
I sincerely hope it’s only Oliver and he’s lost his key.
“We gave him a week to break up with me,” Phoebe says. “He’ll do it, or we will. And I don’t want Jake to have any reason to end our lease.”
Irritation mounted on burning anger—that’s what’s eating through me. “If he ends your lease over you making copies of your keys or because he’s not getting his fake girlfriend for another two months, I will leave him broken on the floor.”