Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
I grin when Knox rolls his eyes before messing up River’s almost shoulder-length locks. “The number of lies he’s told the past nine years hasn’t made him a better liar. He’s still the worst.”
“Am not,” River denies, his tone too high for someone telling the truth. His almond-shaped eyes tilt a little higher when teasing morphs his face. “I told you last week that the girl you brought home was hot, and you believed me.” Knox scoffs at him as if insulted before briskly walking around the SUV and sliding into the driver’s seat. “She looked like a shovel hit her in the face, and that’s coming from someone with flat facial features.”
River often uses his diagnosis for joke material. The school psychologist I questioned about it said it’s a standard coping mechanism for those with DS, and unless I believe it is causing him mental harm, I shouldn’t discourage him from using humor to diffuse a situation.
“You can’t exactly pick on someone by using their punchlines against them,” the psychologist said.
I wanted to deck him that day, but after watching River take down a schoolyard bully in the exact manner he mentioned only minutes after our appointment, I realized he was right.
The bully had nothing to come back with because River had used all the suitable material. Not even the “don’t be mad that the girls want me for the extra chromosome you can’t give them” could be retorted.
River also has the Howells’ looks and charm. He simply rocks an extra chromosome that saw him gaining as much attention as Knox and me when we attended after-school events.
Sometimes he even stole the limelight.
It pissed Knox off more than it did me. Though he’d never admit that if it would risk him losing the world’s best wingman.
River is a lady magnet, even more so when it is announced he was raised by his brother, who is only three and a half years older than him. It has everyone looking at me like I’m a big softie—another reason I denied my little bro’s many requests to visit me in prison.
I needed more than a “touch my brother and die” vibe to survive a maximum security penitentiary. I had to become the title my name will forever be associated with.
Murderer.
2
NICOLE
“It’s one night. What’s the worst thing that could happen?” says Jenni, a daredevil mother of two wrapped in a humble-looking package.
Emily, the more subdued of the duo even with our first meeting occurring while she was so heavily intoxicated she could barely stand, backs her campaign. “And this will be the last time we’ll see you in person for weeks.”
Since freshman year, I assisted my older sister Petra with a designated driver program that offered safe, alternative rides home to intoxicated partygoers in our hometown. Emily and Jenni were our first clients. They were attending a frat party similar to the one our eldest sister, Colette, attended the week before her eighteenth birthday.
It was the event that saw “Forever seventeen” engraved on her headstone.
I shake off the negative thoughts entering my head when I realize Emily and Jenni are awaiting my reply. They’ve subdued a lot from the raucous fifteen-year-olds I assisted up the stairs of Jenni’s stately family home.
Love does that to you. It can change you in a way you’d never imagine.
It can even alter lyrics.
With Noah, Emily’s now husband, writing a majority of Rise Up’s—the world-famous band Jenni’s husband, Nick, plays lead guitar for—lyrics, they went from a grunge metal group to a pop-rock, indie soul sensation in under two years.
Emily’s inclusion in Noah’s life immensely improved his songwriting abilities, but that isn’t something I can capitalize off as well. I signed with a label not responsible for Rise Up’s almost five-year reign at the top of the charts because I don’t want to be accused of coattail riding on their success more than I have been.
The task is mammoth since one of their own discovered me.
I’ve tinkered with songwriting for years, often carrying a notepad with me to jot down compositions that come to me at random times, but I gave no true thought to singing the lyrics until Marcus requested assistance during an impromptu recording session.
Although Rise Up is signed with Destiny Records, Marcus produces most of their albums. He has talent by the bucket loads, and his musical abilities are far more reaching than the bassist position their fans believe is his sole talent.
When he asked me to check the acoustics of a recording studio contractors built in the basement of Emily and Noah’s home, I was clueless about what he required. I thought he wanted me to speak the lines on the music sheet before me, so you can picture my shock when he asked me to sing the lyrics instead.
I wanted to die a thousand deaths when the opening of a now chart-topping hit came out super squeaky, but after a handful of encouraging words and a shimmy of my shoulders to loosen up the nerves, the following few lines were more polished.