Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 46257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“Honey, I’m just glad you’re alright,” is all he says. “But now I have to go back to work, and your Mom thinks it’s for the best if you spend the rest of the day with me.”
I guess I’m not totally surprised by that. Mom likes to have her little ways to control me, but only as long as she has my Dad around to make sure he’s the one acting as my handler.
Mom works, we all do. But exactly what she does when no one’s around is anyone’s guess.
If the state of my room after she’s ‘cleaned it for me’ is anything to go by, she does a lot of snooping where I’m concerned anyway.
It’s hardly daddy-daughter day, but at least my Dad’s office has a couch I can crash on for a few hours. A few hours that turn into nightfall by the time he wakes me up, letting me know he’s caught up now and we can go home.
Physically, I feel like I’ve been thrown from a burning building.
Mentally and emotionally?
It’s simple. I miss Ash already, and I feel worse than bad for not sticking close to him when he offered nothing but kindness and friendship.
But a grown man, Bridget. A real man. A man who knows what he wants, too….
I huff a sigh at the thought. I wish I wasn’t such a ‘beginner’ at everything.
“We can grab some take-out on the way home,” my Dad offers as we drive home, but I can only shrug.
Dad’s deliberately avoiding the topic of what happened today, which I guess is his way of coping or not dealing with things until Mom tells him he has to. But he does give me one piece of good news. And it eases a part of my scrambled mind a little.
“Karen was fired today,” Dad mentions casually. Taking the turn-off toward our neighborhood.
Instantly, I’m all ears, and I can tell Dad wants to tell me before we get home.
“Yeah…I got a call from the bank. Checking to see how you were doing. They’re really worried about you,” he says thoughtfully, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
Karen fired? Wow. I mean aww, poor Karen.
“Apparently, it was her job to make sure the fire exits were unlocked and do the drill herself,” he explains, doing a bad job at hiding the little smile playing on his lips.
He notices his good news’s effect on me as I pipe in that maybe some burgers and fries mightn’t be such a crazy idea after all.
“You can have all the time off you need to,” he adds. “You’ve got a bunch of leave owed you, but the branch manager insists on paying you and everyone else while they make other arrangements for the new office,” he explains, and I can feel some of the heaviest weight lifted from my mind in a few words from him.
“Thanks, Dad,” I whisper, knowing there’s probably a lot more to it than he’s told me. But he’s keeping it short and sweet for my benefit.
I think there’s a lot more to my Dad than he lets on, and him parroting a lot of what my Mom says might’ve just given me the wrong impression of him.
We pull into a burger joint, and just like when I was little, Dad gets us a booth, and we take our time enjoying some of the finest junk food I’ve had in ages.
“You wanna tell me what happened today?” he finally asks. And I know he means what happened that’s still bothering me.
All flames, smoke, and leaping from burning buildings aside.
I open my mouth to answer him, wanting to tell him all about Ash, how amazing he was. How it was Ash who saved me and how much I feel for him because of it.
How deeply I know I’ve fallen for Ash, even after only knowing him for a few minutes.
But I don’t tell him any of that.
Something in me knows he wouldn’t understand the way I mean it.
Plus, Ash being an older guy, I don’t think my Dad is gonna encourage the kind of thoughts I’m having about him. Rescued or not. My Dad would never let me date anyone older. I just know he wouldn’t.
“You know, the manager at the bank told me you jumped from three stories up…caught by a firefighter on his day off,” my Dad finally says, matter of fact.
As if it’s news to me.
He creases his mouth and tells me, “You can talk to me, Bridget. I’m not an ogre all the time,” he murmurs, his voice suddenly thick with emotion.
“I don’t think you’d understand, Dad,” Is all I can think to say, as much as I can see it hurts him to hear that. But it’s true.
Dad stays silent for a long time, and it’s only after all the food’s gone and it’s clear we should go that he speaks up again.