Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 51122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
On a normal day, pre-Covid-19, this place would’ve already been hopping.
Now, there was one lone elderly man pushing his walker down the path.
I waved and smiled at him as I passed, making sure to stay six feet away, and began my run.
The first eight miles went great. Everything was moving well, my knees didn’t hurt, and my breathing was steady.
It was mile nine when everything started to go to hell.
My audio book app started to glitch, and I had to switch over to music, which made me speed up and slow down with the tempo of the songs that I was listening to.
I was so frustrated with my stupid song selection that at first, I didn’t see him until I was nearly right in front of where he was standing. That’s when I nearly started to cry.
Because there was my man.
Hancock stood on the sidewalk with a sign in his hands that read, “Sixteen more miles to go. You got this.”
At mile eleven, I saw him again, this time in his truck, one of our kids hanging out the window with a bottle of water for me.
I took it, drank it down, and then tossed the trash back at him.
He caught it, he was his father’s child after all, and waved.
I waved back.
I didn’t see him again until mile fourteen.
There, he handed me another bottle of water, a banana, and gave me a sexy wink.
It was at mile fifteen that his brother, Hannibal, made his appearance.
He wasn’t smiling like my man, but he had his own way of making it known that he was proud of me.
With a fist bump and a yell of ‘keep fucking moving’ I smiled really huge and kept going.
It went like this for the next eight miles.
It was mile twenty-three when everything really started to go wrong.
My right Airpod died, my legs were Jell-O, and I was fairly sure I had a blister on the bottom of both feet.
But I pushed through when I saw my man, once again.
But this time, he wasn’t on the side of the road.
He ran up beside me, smacked my butt, and told me to keep moving.
I did, for him.
And Hancock practically pushed me the entire way until finally my watch read 26.2.
At the end I was met with Hannibal and all of my babies.
Each and every one of them gave my sweaty self a kiss.
But the icing on the cake was the paper medal that my kiddos gave me that was made out of glue, construction paper, staples, and zip ties.
It was the best thing I’d ever been given besides them.
Which was promptly when I burst out crying.
Book: Pitch, Please
CHAPTER 3
If you sit down to poop in prison, remove one foot from your pants so if you get attacked, you can still fight.
-Conleigh’s life lessons
CONLEIGH
“Lincoln James,” I growled through clenched teeth. “If you do not get off your butt right this instant and help me teach this kid her math homework, I’m going to shove this map color up your butt so far that…”
Linc put his arms around me, pressed himself against my backside, and dropped his mouth to my throat.
“Sounds kinky,” he teased.
I turned around and grabbed him by one of my favorite parts.
“I’ll squeeze these like grapes,” I threatened, “if you do not let go of me right this instant.”
Linc was the reason that I was in this mess in the first place.
I was tired, cranky, in the middle of cooking dinner for the fourteenth day in a row, and I was irritable.
Oh, and I was pregnant.
Again.
In fact, I was about two seconds from popping, and now I had to deal with the Corona virus, the threat of only having Linc in the hospital with me, and my mother and stepfather not being there. Nor, for that matter, would Linc’s parents.
Needless to say, I was not in a good place.
“Yes, ma’am.” Linc pressed a kiss to my cheek. “What we got, monster?”
• • •
LINC
Sasha, my eldest, was now in second grade.
She was working on subtracting.
“It’s telling you that you need to add up to subtract,” Conleigh grumbled under her breath. “What the hell does that even mean? What’s so bad about subtracting double digit numbers the old way? I mean, she knows how to borrow.”
I knew what she meant, and by the time I’d figured out how to ‘add to subtract’ I was just as frustrated as Conleigh.
“Does that help you any, baby?” I asked Sasha.
Mila, not to be ignored, came toddling over, her hands going to my shorts and nearly pulling them all the way down in her exuberance to get in my arms.
I bent down and lifted her, easily hefting her onto my hip, and waited for Sasha to answer me.
“You do the next one,” I suggested when she just looked at me blankly.
“Can I do it my way?” she asked, sounding hopeful.