Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
We’d called him right after we’d left the doctor’s office, and he had let out a noise that made us both laugh. “Holy shit. We’re gonna be overrun with girls now, Dad.”
The man sitting in the car beside me, still holding my hand, had grinned forward through the windshield with bright eyes and said the best thing he could have ever come up with, “I’m not complaining.”
He meant every word of it too.
God knew I could never forget the way that Rhodes’s whole body had trembled after the doctor had confirmed that I was pregnant. How his eyes had filled with tears, how his mouth had pressed against my cheeks, forehead, nose, and even my chin after I’d given birth to Azalia. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner, father, or a better man than him to spend the rest of my life with. He lifted me up, believed in me, and filled my life with more love than I ever could have asked for.
“Are you good, angel?” Rhodes asked, running his palm up and down my upper arm warmly, saving the day like always.
Moving my gaze away from the people that I used to know—I had a feeling it would be the last time I would ever see them—I nodded at Rhodes. At my husband. The person who would go through heaven and hell to get to me if I was ever lost. The man who had given me every single thing I had ever wanted and more.
This one ceremony had been enough. I hadn’t missed out, not even a little bit. I was ready to go home. Ready to continue living my life with these people that I loved with my entire soul.
And it was as we were walking toward the elevators that Am snickered. “You know what I just thought about, Ora?”
I glanced at him. “No, tell me.”
“Hear me out. What would have happened if I wouldn’t have rented the garage apartment out to you? I almost chickened out. Would Dad have ever met you? Would I be going to school for music? Would you own the store?” he asked with a thoughtful expression. “You ever wonder?”
I didn’t have to think about it, so I told him the truth.
I told him that I had before, but it had been a long time since then.
Because I had ended up exactly where I should have, where every decision that had been made before me and made by me had led.
I was one of the lucky ones, I thought as a flicker of a thought brushed through my head; there so effortlessly, it stole my breath away. I grabbed Rhodes’s arm in shock, and he glanced down at me curiously, with so much love it was just one more thing to steal my breath away.
And the thought, the words, came to me again.
I found a place where I belong,
A place with love that feels like home again.