Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 67468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
I thought about them.
Then I thought about how badly I wanted her to have my last name.
“I’m done waiting for what I want,” I said. “If they can make it, cool. If they can’t, oh well. They can be there for the birth of our kids.”
She started to snicker. “I’ll let you tell my dad that.”
I groaned. “He might kill me.”
“He won’t kill you.” She pushed off the bed and headed to the bathroom.
I followed her and spoke about what we were going to do that day.
I had a job to do, and so did she.
But neither one of us wanted to leave.
Sadly, that’s exactly what we had to do.
We had to go to work.
I had to come home to an empty house.
But, when she finally did get home, I realized that I got to do this all over again tomorrow.
I got to spend the night with her in my arms. I got to wake up and make love to her. Soon, I’d get to marry her.
I got to love Alice Paradis, soon to be Alice Costas.
How fucking lucky was I?
EPILOGUE
The best things in life either make you fat, drunk or pregnant.
-Alice to Cassius
CASSIUS
Seven Years Later
We were shuffling our clothes, smoothing them in place, and giving each other relieved looks when we made our way out of our bedroom.
“Oh, you’re just a beautiful baby girl, aren’t you, Jacksyn?” my mom cooed.
Jacksyn, our three-year-old going on thirty-year-old, looked at my mother as if she hung the moon.
Same, little one. Same.
It’d been seven years since we’d gotten her back, and every time I saw her, it still felt like a goddamn arrow had taken me through the heart.
I’d spent years thinking she was dead. And just as many knowing she was alive.
Yet every single time she walked into the room, I felt like my goddamn heart was bursting.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d left unsaid.
How much I’d left undone.
How horrified I was to live the rest of my life without my mom in it.
I knew, eventually, she would die.
She would leave this earth, and once again, I would be left floundering.
But at least this time, I would have my beautiful wife and my children to see me through the heartbreak.
A rather rambunctious fart had me glancing at my daughter, who’d been so animatedly showing her grandmother her ‘ballerina dance.’
“’Scuse me,” Jacksyn, named after my sister, said. “I had to fart.”
My mother’s face went red with the laughter she was holding in.
“Ballerinas don’t fart, Jacksyn,” I teased.
“I said ‘scuse me!’” she cried.
I grinned.
Jacksyn looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, “Ballerinas fart, too, Dad.”
I slapped my hand over my heart, which was now aching, and said, “What did you just call me?”
“Dad.” She narrowed her eyes. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“NO!” I cried out. “I’m Daddy!”
“You’re ‘Dad’ when you call me on my bodily functions that I can’t control!” she said with only the attitude that her mother’s daughter could.
“Jacksyn Rose, you better quit that attitude before Daddy forgets how much you like ice cream,” Alice called.
I looked over to find Alice and my mother giggling their asses off.
Assholes.
“We’ll see how you like it when she calls you ‘Mom,’” I grumbled.
Alice winked at me, unfazed.
“Uncle Silvy!” Jacksyn screeched at the top of her lungs.
We all looked to the side yard where Silvy was walking toward us in uniform.
His wife, Karen following behind him.
Jacksyn was already running toward Silvy, but at the last minute, she swerved around Silvy who’d dropped down onto his haunches to pick Jacksyn up, and ran straight at her favorite person in the world.
I wasn’t sure if it was fate or something, but it was as if Jacksyn knew that if it hadn’t been for Karen, Jacksyn wouldn’t be here today.
Karen’s role in saving Alice and my mom… I could never, ever repay her.
“Oh, my sweet baby girl.” Karen hugged Jacksyn tight as Silvy made his way toward us, heartbreak written plain as day on his face.
“I can’t believe that just happened.” He placed his hand over his heart.
Mine was still over mine, so I knew exactly how he felt.
“Who’s ready to go out and get this done?” My mother clapped.
I looked over at my mom to see her in her bathing suit and nothing else.
My mother’s fear of the ocean had kept her stranded on that island for seven years.
She wasn’t allowing that fear to ever force her to be anywhere she didn’t want to be ever again.
So, that was why Jacksyn and my mother were taking swimming lessons together.
We had a friend, Gretchen, who was teaching our daughter how to swim.
She specialized her swimming in the roaring waves at the beach.
Why?
Because she’d had a daughter pass away that had been swept out by a rip current at the public beach that we would be going to.
She wanted to make sure every single kid knew what to do when it came to swimming at the beach.