Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Hmm.
Her mouth formed a very flat smile. “You don’t remember that I know?”
“Know what?”
Her lips moved, but nothing actually came out of her mouth. “That you had a crush on him.”
I guess I had told her everything. I laughed. “When I was ten!”
She wasn’t done. “I saw you check him out.”
I rolled my eyes so hard as I laughed. “Yeah, because he’s the size of a Jeep, and I haven’t seen him in almost twenty years.” And because I couldn’t lie to her, I didn’t. “He’s really good-looking, but come on.” That wasn’t exactly a mystery, and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise and come across as even more suspicious.
“Ha!” She tapped the tip of her nose, and I knew what she was saying. She’d smelled my attraction to him.
Which meant chances were, so had he, dang it.
Unless he’d been too preoccupied, or had shut off his senses then, I could only hope.
The urge to argue that it meant nothing was on the tip of my tongue, but then I remembered exactly how I’d treated her after she’d met Matti and been all goo-goo-gah-gah over him, and I had picked on her relentlessly.
She could have this, mostly because it meant nothing. It had been a long time since I’d given her any kind of ammo to tease me with.
“Eh, he’s all right. Matti got the good looks in the family,” Sienna said after I stared at her for a minute. “He’s too intense for me. He’s kind of scary, don’t you think?”
That made me laugh some more. “Henri? Scary? Why? What do you have to be scared of?”
Her eyes went squinty. “Did you not see the size of him when he was about to rip your face off?”
“He wanted to, didn’t he?”
“Matti said he wouldn’t have, but I don’t believe him.”
“He was not going to rip your face off, Nina!” Matti hollered from inside the bathroom.
“Quit eavesdropping!” I said in a normal volume as Duncan got up and did a little circle on the bed before plopping down with his toy in his mouth. He looked so tired, it made me smile. Anyway. “Once he knew it was me, I don’t think he would have either, but when he didn’t know? Definitely.”
“I didn’t know you knew him that well,” Sienna went back to whispering. “Why does he call you Cricket?”
Before I could answer, a weird sound came from the bathroom that had all three of us turning toward the door. I raised my eyebrows at my friend, and she did it right back before calling out, “Babe? You all right?”
There was a short pause before he shouted, “Fine!”
Whatever that was hadn’t sounded fine to me, even though I couldn’t tell what it had been. It hadn’t exactly been fart-like. But Si and I shrugged at each other, and I answered her question. “I don’t know him that great. You know, he spent the summers with us, and then he moved in with them for a about a year after he graduated.” No one had ever mentioned why he’d done that. “He was always polite, and sometimes he was nice—nicer to me than Matti, but that’s probably because I’m a girl and he didn’t want to hurt my feelings,” I explained, and she nodded. “Maybe he felt bad I was adopted?”
Sienna nodded. “But why Cricket?”
I grinned. “Because I talked a lot—”
“You still do!” Matti shouted, still not minding his own business.
I groaned. “Yes, yes, I still talk a lot, but back then I talked a lot. I had a chirpy little voice, and once I got going, there was no stopping me. So, Cricket was born, and it stuck.”
She grinned. “That’s cute.” She made a funny face suddenly. “I’ve never heard him call Matti anything but his name.”
“‘Dumbass’ is the only thing that comes to mind.”
She nodded slowly like she agreed. Then she shrugged. “At least you know someone here, right?”
Someone who had made me moving here a little harder, but sure. I rubbed Duncan’s soft ear.
At least I knew someone.
It was no surprise I couldn’t fall asleep after we left Matti and Sienna’s room. Neither one of them stayed up late. Under normal circumstances, they both woke up early to go running before starting their day. Duncan and I were the complete opposite; we were usually outside playing at midnight.
My mom used to tell me all about how, when I’d been a baby, I wouldn’t sleep during normal hours and how she and my dad would have to take turns every other night keeping me company. You never cried, Nina. We would find you sitting up in your crib, and later on in your toddler bed, looking out the window. Sometimes you looked so sad, we wouldn’t be able to sleep it broke our hearts, so we started staying up with you.