Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81808 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81808 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
After a few seconds, I couldn’t stifle the laugh, and I snickered into his shoulder. “What’s your plan here?”
“To hug you until you stop talking about what I didn’t mean and start thinking ‘God, he’s a pain in the ass, but damn, I sure do like being held in his arms.’”
I liked it a bit too much. “This is not a good idea.”
“You never know unless you try.”
I couldn’t really argue that point.
SEVEN
When we got back to Coille, I took Evan home with me, and Narah, Abel, Justin, and Fletcher came along, wanting to see my house.
Cole said he would grab stuff for himself and his brother and be there shortly, and that Reggie was going to help him carry. He left me with the parting words: “I’m very much looking forward to my sleepover, Mere.”
I shook my head at him, but his wicked grin was infectious, and I had to smile in return.
We had to stop by the shelter so I could have Diane check Evan over. Everyone was pleased to meet her, as she was them, but she was very confused as to what had been wrong with Cole’s little brother.
“He was having seizures,” I explained to her.
She wanted him to follow up with his regular doctor, and when he told her he didn’t have one yet, she recommended a woman she liked in Lewisburg. I took the card, even though wolves never got sick as a rule. Injuries had to be purposely inflicted, or something supernatural had to have occurred. I wasn’t worried about much happening to Evan again.
After we reached my home and I walked everyone up to my front door, Evan stepped inside, took off his shoes, and stumbled forward a moment before getting his feet back under him and walking straight over to the hearth, which was blazing away. He snuggled up on the end of the sectional closest to the fire, wrapped himself in a blanket, and closed his eyes.
“Okay—” I smiled at Narah. “—I think he’s good for the night.”
“Oh, Merritt,” she breathed, staring straight up into what I thought of as the atrium of my house. It didn’t hurt that it was glass in the middle. “You have an enormous skylight. Aren’t you afraid that it will crack from the snow or ice or if it’s ever hit by a falling tree?”
I had planted all the trees around my home myself, and they were no more likely to fall than I was to catch a cold. “The glass is very thick, and it comes to a point, as you can see, so no. I’ve never had any trouble.”
“This is incredible,” Justin whispered. “It’s like living in the sky.”
There were deep woods all around us, the long drive out to the road out front, and above us, at the moment, dark clouds that I was guessing would soon pelt us with rain.
“You couldn’t possibly have done this yourself.” Abel glanced at me.
“Oh no, this was done by my family over several generations.”
Abel stared at me, and he didn’t appear happy. “May we sit?”
“Sure. Would you all like some tea? Desta makes the best, and she always tries the new brews out on me.”
“That sounds amazing,” Narah said. “Would you like us up here at your island?”
“Sit wherever you want. There are chairs all over, as you can see, and there’s a couch where you can look out at a small grove. Cole liked that area quite a bit when he visited.”
“Is it okay if I walk around, go upstairs?” Fletcher asked me. “I see books up there, and paintings and tapestries.”
The second floor was where most of my treasures were, and people who visited usually wanted to see them.
“Yeah, sure, g’head.”
He started up as Justin walked around, staring at the floor, putting his hand on the glass windows, and taking in how big the area was and the enormous copper pipes that ran up one wall.
“Is this your bedroom?” Justin asked me when he reached a door.
“No, that’s a guest room.”
“And where’s your room?”
“Way over here at the end of this wall by the kitchen.”
“Hey, Merritt?” Fletcher called down to me.
After putting on the kettle, I walked over into the middle of the room, out from under the fossilized wood walkways of the second floor, and looked up at him where he stood, looking down at me and holding on to the railing.
“Is that a bedroom?”
“It is. It belongs to my roommate, who’s not around that often,” I told him.
“It’s locked.” He smiled sheepishly. “I just wanted to see what it was.”
“Don’t worry about it. Even if she were here, if she was in her room and you tried to open the door, she wouldn’t care.”
“You live with a woman?”
Technically, no. I lived with a siren who could be gone for months at a time, but there was no way to explain that to any of them. “Yes. And I hardly see her, which makes her the perfect person to live with.”