Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
With my fourth release, I had spent two weeks on a US tour and was now being sent to the UK. London was my first stop. Arden was going to meet me in Berlin at the end of the week.
Me: Work. I’ve been putting in a lot of hours.
That wasn’t a lie.
Ransom: You can’t stay locked up, editing your life away, Shakespeare. You gotta get out and live a little. You still dating the editor?
I never gave him Arden’s name because, well, he hadn’t asked. I also hadn’t told him we’d gotten engaged. I wasn’t sure why, but I was struggling with a way to say it. Not that Ransom would care. Our relationship wasn’t like that. But he was anti-marriage. That I knew. And I didn’t want to hear his negativity on the subject.
Me: I am. But we’re both busy.
Ransom: Don’t be that girl. The one who waits around for a guy to call. Go do something without him.
Me: Eh, that requires peopling. I love the written word more than humans. You know that.
Ransom: You might be onto something there. Most people suck.
It might have been nine years, eleven months, and three days since I’d last heard his voice, but it was still so clear in my head. That was weird, wasn’t it?
Me: Which people are sucking in your world as of late?
Ransom: Than is being a dumb shit. I’m getting fucking anxiety because of him.
I stared down at the words. It wasn’t the first time he’d complained about his brother, but this seemed different. Or I was reading into it because I had been awake for twenty-one hours.
Me: Problems in the distillery?
That was normally his complaint with Than.
Ransom: No. It’s a female. A hot one. But off-limits. He’s got his head messed up over her. I don’t get it. There are a million hot females out there. Pick another.
Comments like this I was used to. Ransom acting as if one beautiful woman was interchangeable with another. He never looked deeper than their appearance. He wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted more. Just a hot fuck. His words, not mine. And unlike my books, I couldn’t write him into changing. Wanting more, getting completely obsessed with one woman and not being able to see any other. This was real life. Not my imagination.
Me: Maybe he’s in love.
Like I’d expected, his response was immediate.
Ransom: That’s bullshit, and you know it, Shakespeare. I’ve explained men to you. We want sex. The more kink, the better. Then we want to move on to the next one. That’s the real thing going on in men’s heads. We are driven by our dick. Then our dick gets bored and wants a new cunt.
I rolled my eyes with a sigh. This was reality with Ransom. Perhaps that was why I’d loved writing him into the role of a man who believed this way, then found out that love was real, and when he met the right woman, he’d change.
Me: Then I am sure Than will move on and forget her soon enough.
If he was anything like his brother at least.
Ransom: I fucking hope so.
One
Ransom
The Present
The door swung open as one of the most beautiful women I knew filled the entrance and beamed at me with a smile she’d inherited from our mother. But then Opal was as stunning as our mom had been. It amazed me how the older she’d gotten, the more I saw the woman who had left us too early in life.
“You’re here!” she squealed and threw her arms around my neck with so much force that I had to brace myself.
“It’s your lucky day,” I drawled as I patted her on the back.
She released me and stepped back so I could come inside her twenty-five-hundred-square-foot apartment overlooking the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia. The wall of floor-to-ceiling windows not only gave you a sweeping view of the water, but an excellent view of Washington, DC. The white ceramic flooring was given splashes of color in an aqua blue with rugs she’d placed in a few areas. I liked her place. Fuck knows what Dad had paid for it, but it was safe, and it made her happy. Those were his only concerns.
“I can’t believe you’re here. When you called, I was at my Pilates class, so my phone was on silent,” she explained.
I had known that. We had a constant tracker on her. Several actually. I could see her exact location at all times, as could my dad and Than. We all kept a close eye on her. Having the only female in our family living almost a thousand miles away wasn’t easy. But Opal had pleaded to be sent off to boarding school near here when she was thirteen, and she’d never wanted to come back. She’d made her life here, and we, in return, had become excellent stalkers in order to ease our minds and keep her safe.