Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
“Well, I give more fucks,” she said quietly.
I thought it over for a moment. “Here’s the thing,” I said, leaning up on my elbow. “If somethin’ happens, someone needs to be in here with you. If you’d rather share a room with your parents, you can do that. Or Lu—she probably wouldn’t mind.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “Do you think something will happen?”
“Nope,” I lied. “It’s just a precaution.”
I couldn’t know if they’d find us, not without knowing how they’d found Cecilia in the first place. The house was secure, with silent alarms and—if I knew Wilson—booby traps, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t show up. It just meant we’d have a little warning before they got in.
As Cecilia got herself and the baby settled, I turned off the bedside lamp, leaving the room aglow from a light in the closet. I knew better than to pitch the room into darkness. Neither of us had ever discussed it, I hadn’t wanted to broach it, and she’d never offered the information, but I’d always known that Cecilia was afraid of the dark.
It was just one more thing that she hid from everyone and hadn’t been able to hide from me.
“My parents are going to want to take us home soon,” Cecilia said after I’d curled into her, the curve of her ass cradling my dick and her legs tangled with mine. “Do you think he’ll search for us in Oregon?”
I couldn’t lie that time. “He’ll search until he finds you,” I said carefully. “No matter where you go.”
Cecilia sniffled. “She doesn’t even have any legal tie to Cane’s money,” she said in frustration. “And we don’t fucking want it.”
“It’s a lot of money.”
“I have money,” she said. “More than we need.”
“You cut a lot of hair?” I asked.
“I’m damn good at it,” she replied, elbowing me in the gut. “But Cane and Liv also paid me for being a surrogate.”
My head jerked in surprise. “They were buying Olive from you?”
“No,” she said with a huff. “It was payment for a service, in this case, growing their child. It’s completely normal and not at all shady or weird.”
“Sounds weird.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” she said. “Surrogates get paid for their time and energy and trauma to their bodies, and emotional upheaval of having a child for someone.”
“Okay,” I replied. “I get it.”
“Though, I doubt most get paid as much as I was,” she mumbled.
By the time I grew the balls to ask just how much she’d gotten paid for having Olive, she was already asleep. I laid there for a long time, listening to her breathe. The situation she was in was so extreme that we seemed to have fallen back into something that we’d lost years before. It was an easy camaraderie, but I knew it wouldn’t last. At some point, things were going to calm down and we were going to have to face the things we were choosing to ignore.
I tightened my arm around her. Eventually, she was going to come to her senses and not let me anywhere near her. I could feel it coming like an axe being swung at my neck. Because, even though she trusted me to keep her safe—Cecilia was never going to forgive me for what I’d done.
* * *
The next few days passed pretty slow. Cecilia spent most of her time in bed with the baby, which, along with the antibiotics Forrest had picked up, was exactly what she’d needed. Wilson had even set her up with a laptop—warning her not to check any social media or search anything to do with the Warrens or herself—so she could stream movies. And she’d been telling the truth about falling asleep, whenever I checked on her, she’d passed out with Olive, whatever show she’d been watching still playing. The only time she was able to stay awake was when she was taking care of the baby.
Wilson was making progress on the FAM, but it was slow going. Every thread he pulled connected to five others that he’d have to follow. Most of them were dead ends, but we’d found a few land mines. One of Richard Campbell’s daughters had shown up at a police station the year before, reporting that she and her mother and younger siblings had been held hostage on her father’s property for years. Unfortunately, when the police had gone to follow up on her claims, all they’d found was a saccharinely happy family with stories about how unstable the oldest daughter was. Even if she hadn’t gotten the outcome she’d hoped for, the daughter, Kaley, had at least put herself on the state’s radar, which meant that she’d been able to escape the FAM’s hold with little repercussions, and was now living somewhere in Eastern Oregon.
Because she had insider knowledge of the workings inside the FAM, Wilson had started immediately trying to contact her, but hadn’t had any success so far.