Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
“Right.” I breathe out, staring up at the staircase that leads to the loft. The expelled breath doesn’t untense my body. My jaw even clenches.
Oliver glances between me and the loft while sliding a piece of gum into his mouth. “Secrets are no fun unless you tell—”
“Everyone?”
“No. Just me.” His smile reappears as he rests against the stairwell’s railing to face me. I nod a couple times, shove my letter in my back pocket, and study the length of him. I imagine if we found ourselves alone together, he’d warn me to stay away from Hailey.
I keep waiting for the Back off, motherfucker, the sneer between his teeth, the serrated glare…and I realize I’ve been around Rocky too long. That’s his blunt, aggressive routine—growling at me to piss on someone else’s territory and to get the fuck off his.
I’m on defense with Oliver, but how can I play offense when I can’t even give Hailey more than what we are right now?
Silence clings to the air, especially as my eyes hit his.
“And now he’s more interested in me,” Oliver states, reading me too easily. It feels intrusive because I can’t reach into his thoughts. Let alone analyze his feelings. He might as well be an Etch A Sketch, the image disappearing before I see a thing.
It’s…exasperating. Every time I’m around this guy, my brain is a stampede of Thoroughbreds released from a starting gate.
He points up toward the stairs. “Loft? Or me? Where’s your head at, Koning?”
“On Hailey.” I sound protective. I don’t really know him. I just know her.
He blows a bubble. Completely, totally…unconcerned. “Like minds.” He winks.
It’s hard to believe he doesn’t care that I’m sleeping with Hailey when he and I have been actively ignoring each other for weeks. Can’t get into this right now. Regardless of the thousand and one messages I’m dealing with from lawyers, staff at the estate, country club employees, renters from my other properties—I’m responsible for this job they’ve taken on. Because I enlisted their help to blackmail my mother.
I brought them into my mess, and I care about them coming out of it unscathed.
The letters—I don’t know what they could be about. But I do know there’s another issue. I release a tight breath and glance at the door to the loft again. “It’s not a secret exactly.”
“Then what is it? A problem?”
“Yeah.” I unpocket my set of keys. “The girls don’t know it yet, but they’re going to need to move out.”
His brows crinkle. “And why’s that?”
“My mother owned the loft. She was going to sell it to Varrick Wolfe, but when she died, that transaction fell through. So now Trent and I have been fighting over it since this asset wasn’t specified in the will. He knows I want it because my ‘ex-girlfriend’ lives here.” I use air quotes to refer to Phoebe. “He’s gunning too hard for it, and I need to let it go in order to retain other properties.”
I still can’t decipher Oliver. He chews casually on his gum. “Well, fuck. Looks like you’ve just made Hailey homeless.” At this, he strides up the stairs, and I follow behind, exactly where he advised me not to be.
SIX
Rocky
“Don’t,” Nova warns me.
I’m leaning against the fridge in the coastal two-bed, one-bath loft above Baubles & Bookends, loosely gripping the neck of a Koning Lite and staring down the shut bathroom door several lengthy feet away from us.
Nova is seated on a rattan barstool. Did not ask him to be in eyesight of me. Did not ask him to tell me what to fucking do on this ugly Saturday night.
Letters are stacked beside the brewing coffeepot and a Seaside Griddle mug (Trevor swiped it). My name on the top envelope, and no, I haven’t ripped that shit open because, for one, whatever Varrick Wolfe has to say will piss me off, and two, I’m already naturally pissed off, and three, I don’t go rogue. We all agreed to wait until everyone is here. It’s dumb as fuck to take matters into my own hands without consulting the others first.
Something I sincerely hope my little brother has learned the past two weeks.
“Don’t what?” I snap at Nova. He’s going to need to spell it out and not do his whole stern soldier routine with me. I’m not in the mood.
He grinds his jaw, a stubbled goatee and mustache grown in, but he recently buzzed his hair again. His beer bottle—and Glock—rest next to an opened Gambit comic book he’s been reading.
Nova Graves, already prepared for the ending. Let’s hope it doesn’t conclude with a bullet to a head.
His expensive Piaget watch catches the light as he points to the bathroom. “Don’t go in there.”
“I’m not moving, dumbass.”
“You’re considering it.”
He’s not wrong.
I’ve been staring down the bathroom door ever since Hailey and Phoebe rushed inside. We were in mid-conversation about their lunch with the godmothers, and Phoebe suddenly carted Hailey away with an abrupt “We need a moment alone. BRB.”