Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 114011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
A cold blast of fear nails me square in the chest as my fight-or-flight response kicks in. Just before I hurl the remote at the doorway and spring off the recliner for the knife that I used to cut an apple earlier, the person takes a step forward.
“Val!” I pant, throwing myself back into the chair. My heart pounds so hard that it takes me a second to get it under control. “What the fuck?”
“You gave me the key.” She bounds over to the sofa and throws herself on it. “I couldn’t sleep and saw that you were on social media a few minutes ago, so I came over to cuddle.”
My hand splays over my chest. “And you didn’t think to shoot me a text?”
She shrugs as she pulls a throw blanket off the back of the couch and over her body. Then she nestles down into the pillows.
“What’s keeping you up? You’re never up this late,” she says.
“Life.” I toss the remote to her. “I can’t find anything to watch.”
The remote lies untouched at her stomach.
“What’s keeping you up?” I ask her.
“Generalized insomnia.”
“How generalized?”
She presses her lips together. “Basically, it’s generalized into three main categories. One is guilt about things I said to my mother when I was a teenager.”
I laugh at that because Val and her mother have an amazing relationship. I guarantee her mom isn’t thinking about any of those things tonight.
“The second category is actually a question. Where are my birth certificate and Social Security cards right now?”
“Seriously, Val?”
She raises her head a couple of inches off the pillow. “Yes, seriously. What if I need them? Do you know how sucky and hard it would be to try to get those things replaced? I don’t even have the documentation to get them replaced because I don’t have either one of them. It would be mission impossible!” Her head drops like a rock back to the pillows. “I should know where these are, and I don’t. I don’t have a clue. Hell, have I ever even had possession of them? I don’t know.”
I giggle. “Why are you this way?”
“Beats me.” She sighs dramatically. “And the third thing is that I need to find affordable housing that’s not over a funeral home.”
I make a face.
“Yeah,” she says. “That probably should’ve been reason number one.”
“You think?”
“I didn’t think it would bother me,” she says. “Like, the people that come in there are already dead. They’re not going to haunt the place that put them to rest. They’re going to go torment their husband that’s now fucking their best friend or the woman that killed them. Right?”
I lift my shoulders up and down. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it, to be completely honest with you. And may I just say that I pointed all of this out before you signed that lease last year?”
She frowns. “Well, the four-hundred-dollar-a-month rent with utilities included was too hard to pass up.”
“Because it’s a funeral home!”
“I mean, good point . . .” She chuckles. “But that lease is almost up, and I have to figure out what I’m going to do.”
She reaches for the remote and picks a cooking show. As the redhead on the screen babbles about shrimp and grits, my mind drifts off.
There are virtually no rentals around Bloomfield. The few available are sketchy—like the funeral home. Val has played with the idea of moving elsewhere as soon as she finishes her nursing degree, and I do my best to talk her out of it. But if she can’t find somewhere to live now, I might lose her.
And, really, she’s all I have besides Ethan.
“I’m not going to leave you,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“You don’t have to speak when I can read your face, friend.”
This is why I love her.
“I’ll find something,” she says. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Sure. Right.”
She lowers the volume and flops from her side to her back. From that angle, she’s looking directly at me.
“We could move somewhere together,” she says. “Me, you, and Ethan—the three amigos. We could get the hell out of this weather and go somewhere warm. Or somewhere cold and magical. Or somewhere with both but more temperate.”
I grin at her. “You know I’d love to get out of here. But I’ll never leave Bloomfield until at least Ethan is an adult, and probably not even then if he sticks around this area.”
She frowns. “Because Jared is here.”
I take in her tight lips and narrowed eyes. “Yes. Partly.”
“Fuck him.”
“Val . . .”
I sink back into my chair and try to figure out how to explain this to someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to be a single parent with a child in a grown-up’s body as the coparent.
“Look—my job right now is to give Ethan every advantage that I can possibly give him in the world. I believe it’s beneficial for Ethan to be able to foster some kind of a relationship with Jared. And, honestly, he’s the only male figure he even has right now.”