Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 74898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
“Tunnel, you’re so freakin’ annoying,” I told him. “Sometimes, I just want to take you to the back of the store and knock some sense into you with my fists.”
He looked at said fists.
“Minnie, you can’t even kill a fly with a fuckin’ fly swatter,” he told me. “How the fuck do you think you’re going to knock around a man who is twice your size and knows how to take a punch?”
I wouldn’t let my mind hang on to the fact that he knew how to take a punch. He was a police officer. He was, indeed, trained to take a punch, but that wasn’t where he learned to take one.
No, he learned to take one from his old man who took delight in beating the shit out of him. When it came down to it, Tunnel would willingly submit to a beating as long as his sister wasn’t touched.
“Can I help you both with anything?”
That came from a timid young woman decked out in jeans, boots, and a bright orange Home Depot vest.
“Yes,” I said, letting my hands smooth down lazily along my hips as not to reach out and show my husband what I could do with my fist. “I want to get these black quartz countertops with the blue flecks in them. How do we go about doing that?”
“Thank fuckin’ Christ,” Tunnel muttered under his breath.
I glared at the man, and he shut up, but his lips continued to twitch as he tried to hold his smile away.
“I can help you with that,” the woman muttered.
“Well, let’s fuckin’ hope so, honey. You do work here.”
I looked at the ceiling. “Tunnel, don’t make me come over there.”
“Come on over, baby. I’d love for you to show me what you’re workin’ with.”
“Mom!” Sienna screeched. “Come look at this room!”
I looked away from the black countertops. The same black countertops that I’d chosen for my own house, but I had never gotten because Tunnel had passed the next week.
“Coming!” I called out, my heart in my throat at the memory.
God, I miss you, Tun.
Sienna was out in the hallway jumping up and down on the tips of her toes. “Hurry!”
Then she walked into the bedroom that I assumed would be hers, and squealed. “It has a princess bed, Mom!”
My heart clenched.
“It does?” I was surprised.
“And games and toys, oh look! A doll like the one Daddy bought me!”
I looked at the doll she was holding up in her hands. It was an American Girl doll, and one of the only things I was ever able to keep nice since Sienna was rough on all of her toys.
But that had been out of necessity on my part. I wanted her to have something from her father that she could look at in twenty years and not be embarrassed to show it to anyone.
“It’s beautiful, baby,” I murmured quietly. “You’ll have to thank them for their generosity.”
She beamed at me. “I love it!”
Then she was doing something in the closet, and I chose to look at the rest of the room.
The club had gone above and beyond when it came to decorating Sienna’s room.
She had everything in here that she could ever want or need.
This was getting weirder and weirder by the minute.
First my countertops, now Sienna’s room.
I was, quite honestly, scared to look at the rest of the house.
But that wasn’t the hardest part.
No, not seeing the colors that I would’ve decorated my own house in. Not even the bathroom done up exactly how I’d spoken with Tunnel about doing ours.
The hardest part was lying in the bed later that night, smelling my husband for the first time in forever and crying my heart out. That, my friends, was the worst.
Chapter 13
Marriage: when dating goes too far.
-Meme
Mina
A knock at my door woke me up early that morning, and I shifted in the bed and looked at my daughter.
“Mom?”
I sat up all the way.
“Yeah, baby?”
“This house…it doesn’t feel right.”
My brows rose, and I looked at the alarm clock on the opposite side of the bed from where I was sleeping, and noted the time.
Six oh six in the morning.
“What do you mean, honey?”
She walked over to the edge of the bed, the side where her father used to sleep next to me, and crawled into it.
She laid her head down on the pillow and stared at me through the lightening dawn.
“This house feels like home, but it’s not.”
I knew exactly what she meant.
“I like it here, but there’s something missing.”
There it was. And I got it because I also felt that way, too.
“I know,” I agreed.
“I don’t remember him.”
I rolled over onto my back and looked up at the ceiling.
“Let me tell you about him,” I said. “We met when we were very young.”
She chuckled. “I know that part. Tell me a funny story. Tell me something that’ll make me smile.”