Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
She looped her arms around my neck and opened her legs, drawing me closer. “That’s the thing though. You don’t have to let go, Truett. You just have to move forward. That house is not what keeps her memory alive.” She tapped my temple. “Because she will always be alive in here.” She moved her hand to settle over my heart. “And in here. She existed. She’s ours. She will always be ours. The stuff in that house is just that—stuff.”
“It’s her stuff.”
“It was her stuff,” she corrected. “Do you really think that even if she was still here today she’d be living at your house? Sleeping in a twin-sized bed with pink sheets and coloring pictures on the floor? If we were lucky, she had maybe six more months before she outgrew those sneakers you keep by the door. Those toys? They’d have been discarded and sold at the family yard sale the minute she discovered eyeshadow and lip gloss. Truett, you do realize she’d be twenty-four now, right?”
My chin snapped to the side. Had it really been that long? Yes, I mean, logically, I could do the math, but my baby? Twenty-four? “Jesus,” I mumbled.
She smiled, leaning to the side to recapture my gaze. “I see you’re starting to get it. When I was her age, we’d already had and lost her. She’d be a woman now.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I couldn’t fathom a world where Kaitlyn was all grown up. What would she look like? Probably like her mother; she’d always been her clone. Would she still have loved animals? Would she have gone to school to become a vet? Would she have a husband or a family? Holy fuck, would I have had grandkids? I smiled at the thought.
Yes, smiled.
But then again, I was with Gwen. I shouldn’t have even been surprised anymore.
I rested my palms on either side of her on the counter, a million thoughts and scenarios ricocheting in my head. “Do you think we’d still be living in that house?”
“No.” She replied so fast it was downright offensive.
My lips thinned, but it only made her laugh.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she teased. “If I’d let you, you would have filled every room in that house with a baseball team of kids. It would have been busting at the seams. Plus, we were lucky you got stationed at the base nearby, but the Army wasn’t going to let us stay there much longer. Though, with or without that house, I know we’d still be together. Somewhere out there, still bickering over putting down the toilet seat and the temperature on the thermostat.”
That sounded incredible. All of it. The kids, the family, but most of all, the together part. “I miss that life,” I confessed. “The one we had and the one we never got.”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “But would you rather stand still in what could have been?” She swayed toward me, nipping at my bottom lip. “Or move forward with what we could still have?”
I didn’t have to think.
It wasn’t even a question.
I’d known from the minute she dropped the rings at my feet that, if I ever got the chance to get her back, there was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep her. “I just want you.” I spoke between peppered kisses. “I. Just. Want. You.”
She slanted her head, taking the kiss deeper. It wasn’t desperate despite the way I hungered for her. Our tongues slid against each other with the slow rhythm of comfort and longing—promises being made without the use of words.
I was lost in her until she broke our connection all too soon. “I want you too,” she whispered, holding me tight. “But not like this. That whole ‘love conquers all’ thing is a beautiful thought, but we know better than most that love doesn’t always win. You need help, Truett. More help than I can ever give you.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, dread filling my stomach. It was everything I’d feared when she’d walked into my house.
“But!” she amended. “If you can work on yourself, I’d love nothing more than to work on us again.”
I nodded, hope spiraling in my veins. “I’ll do whatever it takes. I promise.”
“Then I’m here, but let me make this clear. I’m not going back to that house.”
As I stood in her kitchen, staring into the eyes of the only woman I had ever loved, with pictures of our daughter on the wall and a future full of possibilities, I suddenly didn’t want to go back, either.
“Can I stay the night with you?”
She smiled, so much damn pride in her eyes it leaked into my chest, filling me too. “Absolutely.”
Gwen
We’d spent the rest of the night looking at old pictures, catching up, and stealing kisses like we were kids again. I’d cooked dinner, but neither of us had touched much of our food. Instead we’d sat for hours, swapping stories, alternating between laughing and crying—and sometimes a combination of the two. It was so damn surreal to have him back in my life. In my house. On my couch. His hand anchored to me no matter how we were sitting.