Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 67000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
“This is fantastic,” I breathed. “Where did you find it?”
“Well, as you know, I had a lot of time on my hands for a few months.” She patted the chair next to her. “Now, what did you get me?”
I laughed. “I got you something that doesn’t seem as cool now. But it’s at home.”
“I can’t wait to see it.” She sighed, then leaned her head against my shoulder. “When do we get to go home?”
“When the party is over, Ellodie Solaire.”
“Ellodie Carter!” multiple Carter boys called.
Ellodie nuzzled my throat. “Hey, Quaid?”
I looked down into her eyes and said, “Hey, Ellodie?”
“How do you feel about installing new locks so we can have some alone time?”
“It won’t work,” Auden called out. “We know how to pick locks.”
I chuckled, pulling her in under my arm, and said, “He’s right. They’re like leeches.”
“We grow on you, though,” Garrett called. “Now, who has more beer? We’re out.”
“If we’re out, you’re all alcoholics,” Ellodie muttered.
Auden placed his cold beer bottle against her feet, causing her to squeal and pull away.
“We’re not alcoholics, Ell,” Dad said as he came up beside us and patted her head. “We’re just celebrating life. Now, can we cut the fuckin’ cake already?”
Ellodie sighed before whispering, “Let’s cut the cake for the grumpy old man.”
“I heard that.”
Our children are going to change the world. We just have to survive raising them, first.
—Text from Ellodie to Quaid
ELLODIE
“Did you see this?” I asked as I showed him the article.
“That Dr. Brewn had his leg chopped off by a shiv in prison?” Quaid asked idly as he searched through Amazon for a new screen protector.
“Yes,” I gasped. “You knew and didn’t tell me?”
“I knew, and only found out when you came back in the room,” he muttered as he clicked a few more buttons.
“This is the second limb he’s lost there,” I said. “Is this something that we’re going to continue to hear about?”
“If God loves us, it will be,” he griped.
Dr. Brewn was living a life that most would call tortuous.
But you couldn’t kill multiple women and live the rest of your days comfortably in a cell in a maximum-security prison.
Especially after he was asked in a court of law why, and he replied with ‘because I wanted to. I like to hear them scream.’
“You forgot to brush your teeth,” he said when I started to crawl into bed beside him.
I got up and headed to the bathroom to wash my face, getting my nightly routine in now so that I didn’t have to get back up to do it later. I hadn’t planned on going to bed yet, but since he’d called me out, I decided to appease him.
“Goddammit, Ellodie,” I heard him bellow from the bedroom.
I was used to hearing ‘dammit, Ellodie’ a lot. But Goddammit, Ellodie was rare for me to hear.
“What?” I asked around a mouthful of toothpaste and toothbrush, glancing in the mirror as he appeared at my back.
Quaid looked at me with murder in his eyes. “I hope that you wanted all that stuff in the Amazon cart, because I just accidentally ordered it all.”
I laughed so hard sprays of toothpaste foam went all over the floor.
“It’s not funny. That was like eighteen hundred dollars’ worth of stuff. Why do you do that?”
Because I was scatterbrained and didn’t have enough time to get a shower in, let alone press ‘order’ on my amazon cart.
He didn’t like my answering shrug, either. “Because it’s all stuff that I want, but I can’t make myself buy.”
He threw up his hands. “Well, just fuckin’ buy it. Now the goddamn UPS driver is going to curse us on the doorbell camera again.”
“It’s his job, Quaid,” I told him as I rinsed my mouth. “Also, I tip him every Christmas really well. And I feed him. He likes coming to our house.”
“Whatever you say,” he said as he cranked the shower on.
“Whatever you say,” I mocked as I tried to leave the room.
The squeal that left me when he pulled me into the shower fully clothed would’ve been funny had it not been followed by a scream that penetrated even the sound of our laughter.
“Shit,” I exclaimed.
“I got him,” he offered as he shoved me farther under the spray. “Get a shower in. You stink.”
I flipped him off, realizing that I did indeed stink after a day in the sun.
I collapsed onto the bed, intent on getting my retribution, but the only thing I did was fall asleep.
When next I woke, it was with my nose inches away from the door, and my Hot Cop guiding me back to bed.
“You’re sleepwalking,” he grumbled.
I fell into the bed, then twisted until my face was buried in Quaid’s side.
“Thanks.”
When I woke the next morning, it was to find the bed empty, but a note on Quaid’s side of the bed saying, “I’ll meet you at the gas station.”