Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
“Gage didn’t seem like the right person, before all of that happening. You wouldn’t look at him and think that he was. But these Sons of Templar men all tend to surprise you.”
I glanced back from the motel to look at Kace.
“I thought I was going to be finished then. I’d survive, of course, because I had Jack at home. I had Ranger. There was a whole life beyond my pain. My plan was to leave it all here. Like a time capsule of suffering. Suspended, yet still connected to me somehow. My pain did stay here, yet it was also still inside of me. Gage helped me understand I wasn’t finished. Some things would just be different. Life did carry on. I’d drive by here sometimes, though. With an almost kind of cockiness. That I’d been dealt my pain and I’d survived it. Then Ranger died. I didn’t come here immediately. No, there wasn’t time. Wasn’t space for that. There were two children to care for. There were things to do. There were lies to tell myself. It came much later, that visit. But it came. And like last time, Gage brought me back again. But I left a lot here. Almost all of me. Left it to die.”
I paused, sucked in the air that smelled faintly of the fast food place across the street. “Then I met you. You grew new things inside of me. You changed me. And I want to show you this, the last of my pain. Maybe I want to show myself I don’t need it anymore. To go to this place for a different reason.”
I sucked in another breath. Deeper this time.
“I’ll always love two men,” I said. “One dead. One alive. He is buried, but what I have for him, it’s eternal. It doesn’t go away. I don’t work that way.” I looked up, but I found myself afraid, and that was unfamiliar. When was the last time I’d felt afraid for myself? To see the look on a man’s face, to see if it was painted with rejection.
He didn’t give me anything. The master of the poker face.
It was torture.
“If you want me, you have to know that,” I continued. “That I’ll always love him. He will always live for me. I can’t change that.”
“Baby,” he murmured, lifting his hands to cup my face. “There’s not a single thing I want to change about you, sure as fuck not the way you love. I can handle you loving your dead husband. As fucked up as it is, I’ll only love you more for it. I’ll make it my personal mission to stay alive longer than you do so you don’t ever have to feel the pain of that loss ever again.”
“Don’t ever leave me,” I whispered.
“Not a worldly or other worldly thing can take me from you,” he promised, having proved this six months ago. The doctor had told us—after he’d woken up—that his recovery was nothing short of miraculous.
So Kace had kept the promise he’d made all that time ago. About preforming miracles.
“What do you think about us getting married?” I asked, sitting in front of the empty pool on a rickety sun lounger.
“I think you need to not suggest things like that when I’m staring at what is quite possibly a dead rat being consumed by one of its own kind. I need a little romance, please,” Kace replied from his own sun lounger.
I smiled. “What? The dead rats aren’t doing it for you?”
“They do it for my plenty. But I have an ego. I like control. As you well know.” His gaze went dark, and my stomach dipped in a delightful way.
“So because of all of this, and because I do only plan on proposing once and plan on you only being proposed to once, I’m gonna need to take the lead on this. But if you want, when I do mine—at an undisclosed place and time when I catch you by surprise—if you aren’t enchanted, we can tell everyone the dead rat story instead of mine. That okay?”
Warmth bloomed in my stomach. An unfamiliar feeling in this place. This place reserved for my wounds and scars, my sorrows.
I put my drink down, moving from my chair to straddle him on his. My hands framed his face. “That is more than okay with me.”
Then I kissed him.
He kissed me back for a while.
When things started to heat up, he pulled away. I made a sound of protest and glared at him.
“As much as I want to continue this, and I really fucking do,” he adjusted himself to communicate just how much he wanted to continue, “I can’t with a good conscience fuck you in one of those rooms.” He titled his head, regarding me. “We make enough good memories here, baby?”