AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After looking at the rooms, Zander had declared that while the picture painted on the wall was cool, it was meant for a baby and he was a big boy, so he would sleep in the other room with the large bed. It was bigger than he was used to, but I knew he would be fine.
The group had the baby room made for Teal previously and it was sweet as heck. They also hadn’t had time to change it but Summer said they could work on that or the other room for Zander so he felt like he had his own space that matched what he liked.
“Oh, that’s not necessary. I don’t know how long we will be here and I don’t want any of you going to any more trouble.”
That remark earned me a stern look from the beast of a man who was telling me with his eyes, that he’d already put me on notice with that shit I was sputtering out.
A giggle escaped me that I wasn’t able to hold back.
Gyth was sweet as pie and big as a Grizzly bear. Something with the whole mix had made me laugh and I lost it.
“Do you find something funny?” he asked.
When I told him I thought his bark was a lot worse than his bite, Summer started cracking up and Gyth rolled his eyes. The total girl move had us both rolling more. The laughter had released some of the anxiety that had me in knots.
“You girls are pure trouble. It was bad enough, but now your posse is growing. All of us guys better watch out for the load of S.H.I.T to come.” His spelling out the word shit was nice of him since Zander was right beside me and his little ears picked up everything.
However, I didn’t think he or the guys always remembered because at the party I had caught wind of Embry collecting money for the swear jar she had whenever their potty mouths, as she liked to call it, got the best of them. It was rather hilarious.
“Alley is the troublemaker, we just follow along,” Summer told him, leaning up and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.
“I can’t argue with that, but you all feed off her and each other. You all have innocent little Teal corrupted, for heaven’s sakes.”
“Oh poor baby. Stop whining and go start grabbing their stuff out of the car, Big Guy,” Summer told him.
At her words, I froze. I was a tad embarrassed about the fact we barely had anything to bring in. In my mind, I knew I couldn’t help it. The fire had been set by a faulty wire in the kitchen upstairs and spread to the shop downstairs wiping everything out. But I was a mother and grown woman so I felt like I should have my shit together better.
Another thing Luke’s mom tried blaming me for. She insisted I hadn’t kept the place up or had it checked out better when we had moved in there. But it was no fault of mine and thankfully once it was ruled an accident, my insurance company came through. That was not good enough still and there was no hiding her dislike of me. It had been that way since the first day we met. I was the daughter of the hired help and not someone her son should be hanging around.
If I could bottle the look on her face when Luke had said he was going to marry me, it would be enough to scare the scariest of villains everywhere. That woman was worse than the stepmother from Cinderella and I had her for a mother-in-law. But there were many reasons I had married Luke and he was nothing like the evil lady.
Maybe I was overreacting a bit, but after some of her last comments to me, I wasn’t sure. Even knowing the truth, she was still trying to control our lives. I just hoped the distance away from her would help. Luke would never want his mother acting like she was and he wouldn’t have put up with it, but he wasn’t here any longer to intervene.
God, I miss you so much.
I spoke to him sometimes. He was my best friend and he was gone. I wasn’t sure even after four years how to live without him. He’d been my sounding board, my rock, and my biggest cheerleader. He always believed in me and was there for me before and after my mom had died.
He had also supported my dream of opening a bookstore. I could rebuild, but the problem was I didn’t want to rebuild in the same place.
“Can I go with him to get my stuff?” Zander asked, pulling me from the chaos swirling through my mind.
“Umm, we don’t have much,” I told the couple, quietly.
“Yeah, all our stuff burned to the ground,” Zander added. Why was it little kids had no filter especially when you wanted them to?
A look of horror must have crossed my face because Summer went into her natural soothing mode again.
“Honey, we already heard and nobody would have expected you to have a house full of things in your car when traveling or after what you have been through. Now let Gyth and Zander go grab your things.”
When Gyth headed out with my son, who was talking a mile a minute as if he’d known the man all his life, Summer ushered me over to the couch. Zander had taken to the whole group, but who could blame him they were a great bunch.
All except maybe one.
The scary part was that Zander seemed to like Rowan too.
“We can go get the two of you anything else you guys need. The girls and I love any excuse for shopping.”
Summer had carried on, no clue to the turmoil going on inside me, but how could she? Nobody knew that story and I was keeping it to myself.
