Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
As for me, she’d gotten me a black shirt with paper rings on it.
Ironic, considering my other plans for that trip.
But it would be a diamond.
And the offer of the rest of my fucking life.
Everleigh - 1.5 years
Taking a deep breath, I looked around the trailer that I’d been working on for weeks.
All the junk had been cleaned up. The surfaces scrubbed into a shine. The linens all washed and re-hung. I’d even attacked the flower beds outside, pulling out the weeds, and planting some seeds that would hopefully come up in the next month or so.
“You sure about this?” Ronald, Detroit and Dallas’s dad asked from his position in his fancy recliner that took some of the pressure off of his back.
I couldn’t tell you exactly when I’d decided to work on this plan. To try to reconnect this family that had somehow gotten strained due mainly to, well, pride. And everyone involved being entirely too stubborn.
I’d happened across Ronald one day when visiting Della, who’d gotten a trailer for herself as well. One she painted in shades of red and pink, claiming she didn’t want any man who stepped inside to feel his testosterone levels plummet.
There’d been no mistaking the family resemblance, though his back injury and the inactivity that followed it had made him much thinner than his sons. Almost gaunt and sickly-looking.
And… I don’t know.
I just… hated the idea of these three men being so pig-headed that they were going to turn their backs on each other because of silly things.
From the stories Detroit told me, his rift with his father came mostly from two things.
One, being that Ronald had, unfortunately, become addicted to his prescription pain meds following his back injury, and, apparently, those pills made him really, really mean.
Even Ronald admitted that to me.
But he’d been off of them for a long time. Ever since he’d gotten a pump in his back that was letting him function more.
Two, well, because Dallas and Ronald were still close, and that put Detroit as the odd-man-out.
There wasn’t a lot of bad blood.
Just tensions and misunderstandings and everyone’s inability to try to sit down and hash things out.
“No,” I admitted to Ronald, shoulders falling. “A part of me is really worried I’m overstepping,” I told him.
“If I know anything about my son, even if he’s not happy about this, he will understand your good intentions,” he said, shrugging.
I really liked Ronald.
On the days I visited Della, I stopped in to help Ronald breathe some life back into his home, then sat with him and listened to him tell me his stories.
I knew he’d been a long-haul trucker when the boys were growing up. Which was why they’d spent so much time with their grandmother while he was on the road, trying to provide for everyone.
But, unfortunately, a drunk driver cut him off one night, and the subsequent crash had caused lifelong damage and pain that had sent all their lives spiraling.
I was hoping to grab a hold of all of these men, and get them all to stop that spiraling.
“He’s a really, really good man,” I said, nodding at Ronald.
“I understand that you might not be able to see it, given the circumstances, but Dallas is too. They’re just too bullheaded to admit it about each other. Put a pinch more basil in that sauce for me, would you?” he asked after sniffing the air.
It turned out that Detroit’s love of cooking was an inherited thing. His grandmother and father both had a knack for it. Ronald struggled around the kitchen these days, but he was letting me throw together one of his signature dishes for him.
He was hiding it well, but Ronald was nervous too. Clearly, the man missed his family as well. And I was hoping we could fix that.
For him.
And his sons.
And, by extension, for me.
And for our future children.
I hadn’t exactly confessed this yet, but I was just waiting for the moment I graduated with my degree. Then I wanted Detroit and I to start a family.
There would be time for working on my social work once the kids were in school.
I think all the time at the club and around all the babies being born there was really getting my clock ticking.
Watching Detroit deftly handle all those kids and babies, too, had definitely been a factor to that ticking that was practically keeping me up at night these days.
And if we were going to have babies, I’d really like them to know their Grandpa Ronny. And their Uncle Dallas.
It felt like a lot was hanging on this.
And I wasn’t sure how either of the men were going to handle this.
“Here we go,” Ronald said when there was a knock at the door.
My stomach tensed as I walked toward it, expecting Detroit.
But it was Dallas at the door.