Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 86340 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86340 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
I swallow. Run my hands down his chest and around his back, bringing my mouth to his skin and kissing the line of his collarbone. “It was why I wouldn’t marry you. Because of my lies, the secrets I kept from you because of it. I didn’t think you deserved a wife with a secret.”
He lowers a hand until it cups my ass. Squeezes it lovingly. “And now?”
I pull away enough to look up, into the steam where I can barely make out the features of his face. “And now… there are no more lies. Not from me.”
His entire body freezes in that moment, skin tightening, rigidity forming, my hands and body feeling the change. When he speaks, it is only his lips that move. “Are you saying… that now…” his voice drops, vulnerability carrying through the whisper of his words… “that you’ll marry me? With me like this?”
I step forward, pressing every piece of me against him, wanting to crawl into and hug his broken, terrified heart. “I’m saying nothing would make me happier.”
He groans, pressing his lips against mine so hard, so strong, that it almost hurts, his hands grabbing at my skin with long, possessive grasps, pulling me against him as if he will never have the chance to touch me again. “That’s a yes?” he asks abruptly, pulling off my mouth, as if the last-minute verification is needed.
I smile, finding his eyes. “That’s a yes, Brant Sharp. I will marry you and be your wife whenever you want to have me.”
“Yesterday,” he blurts, returning to my mouth. “Now.” He presses forward and pulls me tighter, my body made aware of the size of his need. “Forever.”
Then my future husband makes love to me in the shower of our home. And I make sure, for the next fifteen minutes, that no one else crosses his mind. Literally or figuratively.
Chapter 64
“When will the doctor be here?” Wearing boxer briefs, Brant pulls on a T-shirt, his hands reaching for jeans when I’d really rather him be in pajamas, in bed, behaving as my patient.
“In the next half hour.”
He opens a drawer and reaches inside, grabbing a bottle of Aciphex and tossing it to me. “Ask her what this is, and what it’s meant to treat.”
I examine the bottle, twisting open the lid to see it stocked with white tablets. “These aren’t Aciphex?”
“No.” He looks, for a brief moment, sheepish. “Jillian told me they were to control my blackouts.”
“Your what?” I hold up a hand. “Wait. We have so much to discuss it’s crazy. The majority of it concerning Jillian. Can you tell me everything in fifteen minutes?”
He shrugs. “I can do it in five.”
I pocket the bottle of pills. “Let’s sit on the deck and talk.”
“When I was eleven, everything in my life started to change. It came with the onset of my family’s purchase of a computer, the introduction to advanced technology affecting more than just my interests. It was as if my brain turned on full force, in a hundred ways at once, an unlocking of a door that I had shut. I was always intelligent, but I was suddenly gifted. I began to apply the simple facts, concepts, mathematics that I knew, and used them in the way that the computer did – as simple rules that can work with each other to conclude an output. My brain was reborn and it was obsessed with discovery. I could think, could process more, do a hundred calculations in a minute, but I also was bombarded with colors, images, thoughts… more than I could handle at one time. I’d want to build three things at once. Or have two different opinions on the same subject, at the same time. I’d argue with myself, presenting both sides of an argument, my mind understanding the nuances and opinions of either side and feeling strongly on both points.” He collects his thoughts, then continues.
“Everything became, in a series of months, maddening. My brain worked in overtime, and I was exhausted over it. At some point during that time, during that summer… That was when the blackouts started. My brain would go a hundred miles an hour then… nothing. There would be hours of time where I would black out. Say and do things I had no recollection of.”
He pauses and I wait for him to continue.
“Then, on October 12th… I woke up from a blackout in a child’s psych ward. Jillian was in the hospital. That was when the doctors and medical tests started. I don’t remember a lot of that time, but when I got out, Jillian moved into our house. I never went back to school, didn’t see my friends again, everything was focused on keeping me home, keeping my brain busy. We discovered I did better if I had a problem and focused on it. Complex math problems, or unraveling code to debug a virus… anything that involved complex thought quieted the madness. This was before commercial use of the internet, back when computers were basic input output computation tools. Data processors. That was about it. I had already learned to build a computer. When I was in the basement full-time, I began the focus of improving the machine, its performance, then—once that was solved—its capabilities.” He takes a sip of wine, glances at me.