AllFreeNovel
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Because it is abuse. Emotional. Verbal. Financial. That’s pain, too, even though he hasn’t laid a hand on her. Yet.
“I promise I’m getting out.” She stands up, gesturing to the kitchen in a mess. “I’m remodeling this house, so we get top dollar. I’m divorcing him, and we’re selling this, and I’ll take half of all I can get. This house, too.”
She kicks an open moving box. “And all his shit? Every room I remodel, I go through it.” She kicks it again. “Junk he leaves in drawers. Bank statements he hides in A/C vents. I’m going through it all to get what’s mine, too.”
I get up and peer into the box. It’s full of pens, rubber bands, takeout menus, the stuff you cram in a kitchen drawer.
But then I notice it.
An old photo under a Thai takeout menu.
“What’s this?” I pick it up.
“That’s Gentry’s old sailboat. His dad left it to him. He’s been trying to refurbish it for years but gets too busy breaking the law and lives.”
Her sarcasm hits me along with this picture. It’s of Gentry as a boy. He’s standing with his dad on the bow of a Bayfield sailboat with a red boot stripe.
I had no idea he owned this boat. I know all his others. All his cars. All his condos. Everything about him that’s public or on property records.
But not this boat.
“Where does he keep this?”
“I don’t know.” Stacey shrugs. “A couple years ago, he said something about getting the hull gel-coated. Haven’t heard him mention it since.”
I set the picture on the box and grab my phone in my back pocket to snap a copy.
Because this is it, this is where he’s hiding Derek. I know it.
Now we just gotta find it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Y’all just need to talk.”
Silas hands me a wrench while I wedge my shoulders under my kitchen sink.
I know what’s clogging this damn thing. Nicolas keeps dumping the oatmeal he hates down the sink. Renie makes him eat it. And he washes down the guilty evidence that he won’t.
I can’t see Silas, but I answer him, “Think I’m beginning to realize talkin’ doesn’t fix everything,” and I can feel him. His shin rubs against mine, and every part of me feels peace with him.
I wrench the pipe open while Silas jabs, “Spoken like a stubborn man who thinks fighting is talking.”
It makes me grin—the shit he gives me about everything.
Mostly, he’s joking. But when it comes to Cade, he ain’t fooling around. He’s fighting for us to work this out.
I don’t answer him, proving his point while I crawl back out before pulling the drainpipe open.
“Why don’t you hire someone for shit like this?” He’s still on me and looking fucking hot doing it in boardshorts and nothing else.
“Like you don’t like fixin’ everything with your hands too.”
I gotta see it—the guilty smile that lifts his full lips when I glance up at him from my knees.
“You’re a hot, rich celebrity,” he says. “You could pay someone for this so we can focus on me fixin’ other things with my hands around here.”
Damn, I could rip his shorts down. I could take him in my mouth and hear his moans, and that’d fix me up just fine for a while.
