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)
“It’s not her fault,” Nova whispers back.
“We dubbed her the mastermind.”
“We were kids.”
“Her role. Her responsibility. How deep is it drilled in us, really? How deep is being the getaway in you? The seductress in Phoebe? Because I think it’s at least one half of who we are.”
“Ol,” he whispers, sounding softer than usual. I shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but I’m on autopilot now.
Oliver bows closer to him. “She thinks she failed us, and I highly doubt anything will curb her anxiety except for the truth. She needs answers, and I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if she doesn’t find them. So I have to stay for her.” His brown eyes shift to me. Realizing I can hear him, he returns to the sink and busies himself untwisting an expensive canister of shave cream.
She called out for him. The night she entered the loft in a distraught state with a pile of old books.
He’s been visiting the loft twice as much. Canceled therapy appointments with his clients. Phoebe said he was the one who got Hailey to take a bath.
I don’t know how. I don’t want to know why.
Sticking my head in the sand sounds great when it comes to the idea of Oliver with my sister in any way that’s not chaste and virginal. I think I’d rather choke on the desert dunes of Namibia than picture them having sex.
I hand Nova the ceiling-vent cover. “Have you talked to your mom at all?”
“She’s not my mother.”
“That would be a no.”
“We don’t know with certainty that she’s not our mom,” Oliver reasons with him. “We could still be related to Elizabeth.”
Nova unzips his cargo jacket, heating up. “I don’t care if we share her DNA, or that she raised us. The more and more I think about what Elizabeth, Addison, and Everett could’ve done to take Trevor, the sicker I realize they are, Ol.”
He frowns. “It could’ve just been Addison and Everett behind that. No offense,” he adds to me, since they’re my parents.
“None taken,” I deadpan, having little love for any of them. It’s more jarring seeing Nova join me to this degree.
Nova spreads out his arms. “Our mom was an accomplice to likely kidnapping a child. That doesn’t make it any fucking better.”
On the ladder, I rotate more to him. He’s done a complete one-eighty on the people he worshipped. It’s like he discovered the regular man behind the Wizard of Oz, and he’s mad. I never thought anyone would be as anti-godmothers and antigodfather as me. But Nova has boarded my raging ship of one. Or maybe two…considering Phoebe is also pissed.
I’m not sure how this much anger can sail it out to sea.
“They’ve never been good, Winchester,” I say. “None of us have been. We aren’t doling out Candygrams for a living. We screw people over.”
“There’s a line we don’t cross.” He threads his arms and lifts his stiff shoulders. “But fuck me for thinking they’d never put a pinky toe on it.”
“No, fuck them,” I tell him.
His nose flares. He holds my gaze for a long beat and nods a few times, his pain palpable. Oliver reaches out a hand and touches his brother’s head with love. Nova pushes Oliver off with playfulness he only shows his siblings.
I feel around inside the duct. Grabbing three metal boxes, I slide them out and pass a couple to Nova. I climb down with the third in hand.
I shouldn’t still be living with Phoebe’s brothers. And technically, they’re living with me. I’m the one renting the boathouse in Victoria, and they decided to crash here short-term. The longer we’re in this small town, the less vague we can be about who we are and where we come from and our relations to one another.
Our backstories need to be infallible. Never contradictory.
“Why are you living with me at the boathouse?” I quiz them.
“We’re new to the area,” Oliver says smoothly, opening his box. “I’m Oliver Smith, a licensed marriage and family therapist. My brother is Nolan ‘Nova’ Smith. Art curator at the local museum. And we’re still looking for suitable housing, but in the meantime, we’ve always been friendly with our sister’s ex-husband. She’s still friends with him, after all.”
“And we can’t stay with her. Her loft is too small,” Nova concludes with a sterner tone. He’s surly while flipping through IDs in his box. “But we would rather be there.”
I slip him a tight smile. “Trust me, I’d rather have her as a roommate, too.”
Nova glares at me like I said I wanted in her pants.
Already happened. He is not going to take me dating her well. At all. Especially considering he liked her “options” in this new town. Really, he’d like her with anyone but me. It’s annoying as hell, but I can’t say I’d feel any different if my sister were romantically involved with either of them.