Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“I have to confess that an advisor sort of pushed this information on me. I hope that’s okay with you.”
“It’s not an issue at all. I have the best family in the world. Hell, I can’t imagine having been born into a better situation. But there have been times where others have known what I felt was…more than they should have known. Last year, my brother ended up going to the hospital, and they made this big news deal about… Well, my dad passed when I was young, and it was very hard on my family, and hard to see everyone suddenly knowing about that and caring about it, people who didn’t even know who the fuck I was. It’s a strange feeling.”
“That’s what it’s like for most aspects of my life. As you probably saw, Mother’s advocacy for equal marriage was very personal to our family. Although it’s not something I care to talk about with you over the phone. But I do want to tell you about it in order for you to really understand our family. For now, we can just say it’s very precious to me, and in some ways, doing this makes me feel like I’m doing her justice, even though it seems my brother is determined to believe that the whole reason I’m doing this is to shit all over her grave.”
“He can’t think that,” I said, imagining the horror of Jace believing, in any way, that I was doing something to dishonor Crawford or Nance.
“I can’t say he doesn’t have reason to believe it. I haven’t exactly lived a life befitting of a royal.”
I was quiet again.
“Speaking of those things you looked up, I guess rehab isn’t any secret between us.”
I recalled the headlines about his coke addiction. “Are you okay?” Didn’t even know why I said that. It was a weird question to ask. The articles had said it had all happened in his mid-twenties, and clearly he was better by the fact that I was able to see him and that there weren’t any recent news stories about it, but it was what I was genuinely interested in.
“I’m better these days. I can’t say it’s easy to resist temptation all the time, but I understand now why that’s important to do, and I value my life a little more than I used to.”
“It must have been very hard, and you must have been hurting a lot to be at that place.”
“It’s interesting you’d say that.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s not typically people’s response to a former drug addict.” Even as he said the words, I could tell he resented that about himself.
“Well, I’m not like most people, I think you’ll find.” I was expecting a laugh, or a chuckle even, but he was just quiet. I wondered if I had said something wrong.
“No, you’re not like most people, are you? Look, here I called to find out more information about you, and I feel like I’m just sharing stuff that’s already public knowledge about me.”
“Doesn’t sound like you have a lot of people you can talk to about these things.”
“Keegan, you are right about so many things. It’s fairly impressive.”
“I’m assuming these aren’t exactly things I’ll be bringing up in interviews.”
“Not bringing up, but they will be brought up, and we’ll have to have standard answers to curtail them, and… Don’t worry, we’ll review all those things.”
“Sounds like a lot of homework, outside of what I’m already doing.”
“Yes, and I also have to bone up on you, so we’d best return to that. It says on your profile you volunteer at an animal shelter?”
“It’s a no-kill shelter, just to be clear,” I explained. “I wouldn’t be able to work at a shelter that put animals down regularly. Most of my work is spent trying to place animals with owners. Since you mentioned that you already saw I was adopted, I guess you can imagine why I help out there.”
“I’d love for you to tell me.”
“Guess I know what it’s like to not be wanted.” He was quiet, and suddenly I realized I’d fucked up. “Sorry. Oversharing.”
“No, that was perfect, really,” he said. “The more honest you are, the easier this will all be. Thank you for sharing that, Keeg.”
I couldn’t say why, but I really felt that he meant it.
Fortunately, we didn’t have to delve into anything else so weighty. We covered mundane subjects, more along the lines of what I assumed he was trying to find out about me, so I talked about school and home life. We chatted about hobbies and interests. It was the most pleasant of conversations, because after all the craziness we’d been through back in his home country, it felt like even through the weirdness of everything we were dealing with, this was easy. Of course, in the back of my mind, there was this voice that kept saying, What the fuck is happening? What the fuck is happening? However, it began to fade into the background the more we chatted, the more he made me laugh, and there was something about that deep, resonant voice that, even though I enjoyed it in person, was so much more pleasing to listen to on the other end of the line, to focus solely on.