Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
“Yeah.” She pushed the door closed and engaged both locks. The rental still didn’t feel like home, but she felt mostly safe there anyway, and she liked that it was smaller than the house they’d lived in . . . before. Her heart sped the way it always did when she thought of home—of that house—and she pulled in a deep breath. She was working every day to heal, even the days when she could hardly get out of bed. She owed that to her mother and her sister—she was now their voice in the world.
And she owed it to the innocent life she was carrying.
“I have a fire going,” she told Hollis as she led the way to the living room down the hall, pulling the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands and lifting her shoulders. She was nervous and scared, and she didn’t want to cry. It would make it difficult to speak, and that’s why she’d asked him to come over today.
He followed along behind, and when she sat down on the couch, he sat right next to her. Then he took one of her hands in his as he sighed, brushing back a wisp of hair from her cheek.
“You look so gorgeous, Cam.” He ran a thumb over her cheekbone, and she sighed and leaned into it. If she relaxed enough, his touch felt good. She’d needed it, and his tenderness made her believe everything was going to be okay.
He bent forward and kissed her. When he swept his tongue between her lips, her spine straightened and her heart jumped, but not with excitement, with fear. She felt a scream rising in her throat and pushed at him, their mouths coming apart as he stared at her in surprise before anger flashed in his eyes. It was there and gone in a second. He contained it well, but she’d seen it, and it sent a multilayered shiver down her spine . . . resentment, disappointment, anger of her own. “Sorry,” she murmured, turning her face away. “I guess I’m . . .”
“Don’t worry,” Hollis said dismissively, picking up his phone on the coffee table and looking at the screen. “I can’t stay long anyway. I’m supposed to help my dad with something.”
“But you just got here.” She was aware of the whine in her voice, the neediness, but she held back a cringe. Wasn’t it expected that she’d be needy right now? “I haven’t seen much of you. I was concerned that—”
“You don’t need to be,” he said, still scrolling on his phone for a second before placing it back down. “I just wanted to give you time. What happened . . . God, Cami, it’s shattered the whole community.” He ran a hand through his hair and sat back. “Even the nation. Dateline contacted me yesterday.” Dateline. Yes, they’d contacted her, too, and she’d erased their message. But Hollis didn’t ask about that. Didn’t ask if the constant media coverage, even so many months later, bothered her. Didn’t ask if she’d watched any of it or whether she could not.
“I appreciate . . . the time.” Even though you didn’t ask if that’s what I needed. You decided for me. She couldn’t tell if she was being petty, though. She didn’t know if her emotions were rational or not. Her world had collapsed, and she felt buried beneath the rubble, completely unaware what direction she was facing. She didn’t trust herself. She was constantly spinning. Yesterday, she’d been washing dishes at the sink, and then she’d suddenly found herself staring out the window. When she looked at the clock, twenty minutes had disappeared, and she didn’t remember one thought that had run through her mind. For nearly half an hour, she’d been totally blank. How could she judge Hollis’s behavior when she couldn’t even understand her own?
He leaned forward and picked up his phone again. “Well, I should—”
“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out.
His expression didn’t change. He stared at her as though she’d just said two words that, by themselves, didn’t explain a thing and was waiting for the remainder of the information that would make it make sense. “What?”
“I took a test the day of . . . the day of the . . . when . . .” She let out a shuddery breath. Even now, months later, she couldn’t finish that sentence. She fiddled with her sweatshirt sleeves, pulling them over her hands again. “But I didn’t get to look at the results. I stuck the test in my bag, and I’m not even sure where that is now. There were so many officers and detectives tromping through there, even before the moving company. Anyway, when I took it, I was pretty sure, though. I mean, I was hoping I wasn’t, but all the signs—”