Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 498(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 498(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Was this one of Dad’s “fixes” for our family? He’d go to great lengths to protect us.
Or was it Spencer? He’s certainly doing something suspicious because he continues to run around using her card every day to keep up appearances.
Dad and Spencer are close. Maybe they concocted something together.
I slow to a stop at a huge boulder in the woods. It’s covered in black sharpie writing from the years. We’ve all made our mark here. The most recent ones belong to Dempsey—skull drawings, curse words, and Spencer’s number to “call for a good time.”
Dempsey has now taken the rap for both Callum and Spencer. I don’t know what gave him this martyr complex, but we have to stop letting him take the fall, because if we don’t he will end up with more than a slap on the wrist. He might permanently find himself behind bars.
The birds chirp and the wind blows gently through the trees. Is her body buried out here? I wouldn’t put it past Dempsey and Spencer burying her right under the path I run on all the time.
Could my son really kill my wife?
He shot Drew without hesitation. Three times, in fact. He shot him because he was protecting someone he loved. Would killing Neena be his way of protecting me and our family?
My gut churns. If he did, it’s my responsibility to keep him protected from the outside world. Damn. Dad’s right. This whole family needs therapy and with someone we can trust. Spencer has had a helluva few years. Ever since Aubrey left when they were both sixteen, he’s been harder, sharper around the edges, chronically angry.
I can’t have Spencer continue to cover up her death all on his own. That’s what he’s doing after all. My son is smart and using her card to purchase all the things she always loved was brilliant at keeping eyes off the situation. He was protecting me one hundred percent. When I get back home, I’ll need to see if Jude can help me create a new trail that shows Neena traveling up to Canada and disappearing from our lives for good. Spencer will finally be off the hook and we can put this behind us.
“Goodbye, Neena,” I say to the trees. “I hope it was painless.”
I don’t want to think of how she was killed because then I’ll need therapy too. With a heavy sigh, I start my jog back home.
The shower is hot, but I can’t escape the chill that’s settled in my bones. My family has always had our secrets, but whatever happened to Neena feels like the biggest one of all. I want to sit my family in a giant circle and demand everyone’s involvement. Because if Spencer murdered Neena, he had help.
Dempsey. Dad. Theo. Jude.
I shut off the water and quickly towel off. I’m walking into my bedroom when I discover Aubrey is in it. She’s no longer wearing my shirt and the sheet exposes her breasts. Yellow bruises still color her ribs and the pink scar on her neck will forever be visible. But she’s safe and alive.
“Good morning, Love. What are you up to?”
I head for my dresser, but she sits up, shaking her head. “I need you.”
“What do you need?”
“You,” she says in exasperation. “No one will touch me. Not after…” She trails off and her bottom lip wobbles. “Drew didn’t rape me. I’m not ruined.”
“No one said you are ruined,” I growl, tossing the towel to the floor and prowling toward the bed. “We’re just letting you heal.”
We.
As in my son hasn’t had sex with her either.
My heart thunders with pride. Sometimes he behaves like an evil shit, but he’s good deep down. He loves Aubrey and wants to protect her, same as me.
“This is how I heal,” she clips out. “Until then, I’ll be trapped on his bed, with his gun pressing down on my pussy, with his grimy hands stripping my clothes away.”
“Where’s Spencer?” I ask as I crawl over her body.
“Running errands. Again.” She looks away from me, frowning. “He left not long after you went on your run. I tried to get him to touch me, but he blew me off.”
Her hurt is palpable. By us trying to give her the space to heal, we’ve made her feel unwanted and unloved. That changes today.
I bring my lips to hers, kissing her softly at first, and then dive deeper, thrashing my tongue against her own. She moans and I devour that too. My hips settle against her, the thin sheet the only thing between us, and I rub my hard dick against her.
Her legs slide out from under the sheet, hooking around my waist. It feels good to be intimate like this with her again. The fire that rages between us is always so uncontrollable, burning everything, including my morals, in its path.