Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 106(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 106(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
I’m excited to see Dorthia. She’s treated me like her own grandchild from moment one. I get cards from her on every holiday. Not just a text message with a ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Merry Christmas’ emoji, but real, stamped cards and packages in the mail. There’s something special about getting mail and since I never knew my father or his family and my mother was a foster child with no family of her own, Dorthia is the grandmother of my dreams.
But, my heart knots whenever I look at her and know, I’m the one responsible for her being confined to that wheelchair. The one that almost killed her. Shame rots inside me not only for my sins of the past but the more recent ones with Cade.
If he loved my mother, is it just her he sees in me? That thought has rolled around inside my gut and my head since he kissed me in that bathroom at the party.
Has his grief simmered for so long, his sense of obligation to me became entangled with the feelings he had for his wife?
I shake it away as the cherub baby on my lap grips my hair in her tiny fist and tugs.
“I’m so sorry.” Her mother emerges from the tiny bathroom with apologetic eyes. “She’s a hair puller I’m afraid.”
Cade slides his hand around the back of my neck, fingers slipping up the back of my head with a grip and a small tug no one else can see.
“She doesn’t mind.” He flashes one of his rare smiles to the stranger, running his other hand down his thigh, sleeves rolled up on his white button down, ink on full display and his forearms, god help me, when I look at his forearms I get so wet.
The baby is returned and I lean in to Cade, my eyes fluttering shut as I think of how he put me to bed last night with his cock in my mouth. I salivate at the memory, stunned by my new wanton lust and uninhibited nature with my stepfather. My boss. Whatever he is, he’s become my everything.
Three hours later, the limo has dropped us at 452 RR 1 in Brooklyn, Michigan. The Irish Hills they call it because it was settled in the mid 1800’s by Irish immigrants escaping the horrible potato famine. It is green and rolling and on the several previous visits here, quintessential Americana small town.
And I love it.
Life with my mother was always in big cities. I was born in New York as an oops baby while she pursued the first part of her acting career. I know my father was a director maybe, or someone in the entertainment world but that was all she would ever tell me. She said it was one night, a mistake and he disappeared after he found out about the pregnancy. I had questions over the years, but Lilith was a natural actress and willed away my queries somehow in a way that left me less than satisfied but somehow, not willing to fight for more answers.
Dorthia gives me one of her special, grandmother hugs. The kind where you feel no judgment, that you could tell her the worst parts of you and she would wave them away with a flutter of her hand and a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie.
Only, I don’t dare test that theory with the worst parts of me. The ones that put her in that chair.
“Mom.” Cade comes in with our bags from the rented Black Yukon. “Where’s the new van I sent over? You said it was delivered, it’s not in the driveway.”
Her house is immaculate with bright orange and yellow floral wallpaper straight out of the sixties and a classic mid-century modern vibe that is all the rage right now in LA.
“Oh, that.” She waves her hand, giving me a wink. “It’s in the barn. I had one of those workers you sent over to redo the driveway put it away for when the one I have wears out. Then I’ll use it.”
“Mother.” He blows a breath at the ceiling. His chest filling out his white shirt and I’m struck by how sweet he is with her and how drop dead gorgeous he is. “You don’t have to wear out the old one to use the new one. That’s the point, I don’t want you out somewhere and the other one breaks down.”
“It’s only two years old for goodness sake! It has less than 20,000 miles on it. It’s practically new.”
“Just—”
She cuts him off, spinning in her chair toward me. “Come here, let me look at you.” She takes my hands and I see the twinkle in her fading blue eyes. The same eyes that looked down at me in bed this morning as I took her son’s cum for the third time that night. Cum that is still seeping out of me and possibly making her a grandmother at this very moment. “You look positively glowing.” She squints, inspecting me, pulling me down toward her. “You have a boyfriend you haven’t told me about?”