Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I blinked.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you going home?” I asked. “You didn’t ask me to bring you here. I decided to bring you here on my own. If I had a problem with you being here, I would’ve left you at your place, and called in a few favors to get people to check on you.”
She looked away from my face and down to her scars again.
“Nobody does something for nothing.”
Her murmured words had my brows raising.
“No,” I agreed. “Not usually. And in this case, you’d probably be right. But I don’t feel right about leaving you all alone at your place when I have nobody here in mine and the ability to take care of you.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s burden.” She kept speaking in such a low, broken tone that it nearly hurt to hear. “I’m tired of being that person.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but I felt her words in my soul.
“My family died in a car accident,” I told her. “My wife, two children, and my sister were in the car. My sister was driving, and she was high on pain pills at the time. She was the only one who survived. I had to listen to them die while I was on the phone with them.”
Her eyes widened in shock.
Mine did, too.
I couldn’t believe I’d told her. I couldn’t believe that I was able to get the words out.
Normally, they got stuck in my throat. I would try to get the words out, to voice the devastating truth, but it was almost as if my body would physically stop me from talking about it. As if I didn’t say it, then maybe it wouldn’t be true.
It’d been years, and it still felt like it had happened yesterday.
The wound from losing my family was still fresh, and it would forever be a gaping one. It still bled. It felt like I was still in shock most days, and I sometimes wondered if it was really as bad as it sounded.
But this reality of mine was really that bad.
Each morning I’d pray that it was all a bad dream.
Each morning I woke up, and my wife and kids weren’t there.
They didn’t run to me when I emerged from my bedroom, and my cycle in this living hell would start all over again.
God, it fucking hurt.
It hurt so goddamned bad sometimes that I could barely draw a breath.
But then Mary happened.
She saved me.
Every day that she was there since she’d been put into my care by her mother was a day that was a bit less bleak than the day before it.
I wouldn’t say that the life I lived was a good one. I was basically just surviving on the hope that someday it might not hurt as much as it did now. Maybe one day, just the thought of my kids no longer being here to come running into my room and bounce on my chest each morning wouldn’t hurt this much. But that day wasn’t anywhere in sight for me yet, and I had doubts that it ever would be.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked up to find her eyes on me.
“There’s nobody here that’ll complain about you being here. I’m trying to get back into the swing of working, and a lot of shit has piled up during the years that I hid my head in the sand. I’m needed at work, and Travis, my brother, deserves the break. The house is big. It’s empty, and it’s quiet. Honestly, you’ll be doing me a favor by staying.”
She looked torn. “You don’t even know me.”
I shrugged. “You don’t know me, either.”
A little smile kicked up at the corner of her lip. “True.”
With nothing else to do but hope that she would come to the decision to stay on her own, I offered my shower to her.
“You want to shower?” I questioned.
“I can’t,” she hesitated. “They said not to get the incision wet until they take the drains out at the one-week follow-up.”
I nodded my head. “That doesn’t mean we can’t do the bottom half.”
My phone rang before I could do anything more, and I held up a finger and said, “Give me a sec.”
She nodded her head and slumped even more forward, causing me to worry.
I answered it at the same time that I walked to the door.
“Yeah?”
“We got problems,” Travis said.
My heart started to slam inside my chest, and every possible horrible scenario started to play through my brain. My hand froze on the doorknob, and it took everything I had not to drop to my suddenly shaking knees.
“What?” I croaked.
Travis cursed. “It’s nothing bad. Not with Mary, anyway.”
Relief poured through me, and my vision went momentarily white.
“Fuck.”
“God, I’m sorry,” Travis said. “She’s still sleeping in your office. I just went and checked on her. But I got a call out, and I have to take it because everyone else is otherwise occupied. Drake’s truck broke down right outside of town, and I need to go get him. Mom’s here, and she wants to take Mary home with her.”