Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
He keeps his arm across my shoulders, and I find myself leaning a bit of my weight into my brother.
Their support means a lot, even if they’re drawing the same line in the sand as Rocky. I want to say that it’ll be easier with them here. But that’s not true.
Watching them mold a life for themselves that will be better than mine . . . easier than mine . . . is going to be hard to witness. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to stay on this path.
But I want to be.
I have to be.
I won’t screw up.
Twenty-Two
Rocky
Waves slap against rock. Phoebe kicked me out of the loft a month ago, and the melodic sound of the sea has woken me up every morning since. I try not to get used to small things like that. The tranquil splashes and the calming mist. Try not to like them.
People romanticize places and create nostalgia out of it. But places are nothing more than spots on a map. Locations your feet stand on.
I can’t have sentimental fucking feelings for a place.
That’s for the dreamers. The fools.
I’m living in reality, even if it’s a reality of my own creation.
A thirty-foot sailboat is tied to the end of a dock. It’s a piece of shit. Engine busted. The mast bent. Paint chipped off. No one would be shocked if I said I hauled it in from the junkyard. This morning, I swing a hammer at the cracked sink. Gutting the bathroom has been cathartic. Demo isn’t something I do in my normal day-to-day.
Maybe I need this.
Shirtless, sweat trickling down my neck and chest, I swing again. Bits of sink hit my goggles. An indie rock song blares out of my phone. On paper, this should have been the best month of my life. No parents around to force me to do their bidding. Swing.
But it feels weird to only have received a couple general “checking in” texts. Swing.
The truth: I’ve never even tried to get out from under our parents. I couldn’t do it unless someone else agreed to it first.
Because I don’t want to be alone. Swing.
My breathing heavies. Their shortage of communication unsettles me like the overworked cliché—the calm before the storm. I can’t let my guard down, and the more I live on edge, the more I want to explode.
Swing.
The sink cracks completely off the wall.
“ROCKY!” Nova’s voice comes from the top of the boat.
I set the hammer against the wall and reach for my cell, turning the volume down. “Yeah?!” I call out and walk into the galley. Lifting my goggles to my head, I see Nova from the hatch.
“Can you come up here?” he asks. “We need to talk.”
“Come down here.”
He glares. “I’m not going down there.”
Last time he was in a hull, he vomited all over Oliver.
“We’re docked, dumbass,” I say. “How else are you going to learn to get your sea legs?”
“I have land legs, asshole. Get up here.”
I pull my goggles back down over my eyes. “I don’t take orders from you.” I don’t want to take them from anyone. I go for my hammer again.
“Rocky,” Nova says with an intensity that stops me cold. “It’s about my sister.”
My grip tightens on the hammer. Muscles flexed at mention of Phoebe. Is she okay? I could ask. But I don’t need her brothers giving me updates when I have two fingers and used them to text her this morning. It went something like this:
Me: Awake?
Phoebe: Yeah, thanks for the wake up text. *sarcasm*
Me: Just want to make sure you’re okay with serving five hundred elitist assholes at the clambake today.
Phoebe: I’m okay with serving the four hundred and ninety nine of them.
Me: Knew you hated Jake
Phoebe: I was talking about you
Me:
She seemed her normal peachy self. And we’re still hitting the same fiery notes with each other. Yet, I’m hesitating to blow off Nova.
I take another second before throwing the hammer down and ripping off my goggles. In an agitated stride, I leave the only good therapy session I’ve had all year.
As I make the short climb to the top of the boat, wind hits me all at once. Nova has already left the sailboat entirely.
He’s standing on the wooden dock.
The same dock of that boathouse party a month ago. The same boathouse I’ve been renting since Jake banned me from the loft. It was easy to convince the Reynolds’ to rent it out to me.
The narrow, wooden Venetian boat sways in the dock beneath the house. Sailboat’s mast wouldn’t fit under there, obviously, so it’s tied on the dock that extends further into the bay.
I walk to the edge of the boat and stare down at Nova. “You know it’s safer to have a conversation on the boat.” It’s why I got the piece of shit—other than to take out my pent-up feelings on it, that is.