Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
I sighed and looked around the overgrown yard again. I wondered about the new owners. Were they older? Younger? Career people who didn’t have enough time to keep the white picket fence painted and the grass cut? Maybe they had kids who kept them too busy to worry about keeping the window boxes filled with vibrant yet color-coordinated flowers?
I remembered that I’d been in the process of answering Lincoln’s question. “I think I told you what really happened that day already,” I mused.
“Tell me again,” he urged.
“They didn’t say a word when I walked in. I doubted Jimmy or his mom actually told them what Jimmy had done to me, so I don’t think they even realized my arm was broken. But there was so much blood that I thought…”
“You thought it would get a reaction out of them,” Lincoln finished for me.
“There was just silence and tears of disappointment at first, then a lot of scripture being repeated over and over, as well as a lot of them asking what they’d done wrong to end up with a sinful child.” I let out a harsh laugh. “I almost said it probably had something to do with all the affairs my father had been having for most of my life and for all the illegally acquired prescription painkillers my mother would swallow like candy when she thought no one was looking.” I sighed and added, “I guess I should be grateful that I was in too much pain to say anything at all. They sent me to my room and told me to pray for God’s forgiveness, and twenty-four hours later I was walking through the gates of hell on earth.”
I could feel the chill building inside me, and I knew it was because I’d said too much and tiny cracks were starting to spread throughout the wall I’d built up in my head.
“Lincoln?” I asked even as I continued to stare at the house.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think we could just drive around a bit?”
The fingers gripping mine tightened.
“I think we can do that,” Lincoln said, his voice light. I mentally thanked him for not pressing the issue that I, myself, had brought up. When he led me back to the car and opened the passenger side door for me, my eyes met his and it was all I could do not to lean over the top of the door and kiss him.
“How about some ice cream first? Cam told me about this little custard stand in Amsterdam that makes the best shakes,” he suggested.
“Amsterdam? I guess all those professors in nursing school forgot to mention you can’t get to Amsterdam by car.”
I managed to keep a straight face for about five seconds, which was long enough for Lincoln to process my joke. “Little shit,” he muttered before he grinned and tousled my hair.
“Double D’s,” I said with a laugh. “Ford and I used to ride our bikes there almost every Saturday when the snow finally melted.” I dropped down into the passenger seat and let Lincoln close the door. Once he was settled in the driver’s seat, I added, “We knew there was some kind of joke behind the name but figured it had to do with the owners being named Dick and Dee.” I actually laughed aloud. “We kept hearing all these people laughing when they’d say the name of the place, so we’d spend the entire bike ride there and back trying to come up with names that made sense.”
“When did you figure it out?” Lincoln asked with a chuckle.
I could feel the blush crawling up my neck. “Um, not sure.”
“Liar,” he said with amusement. “Now you have to tell me.”
I shook my head even as I smiled at the memory. When I glanced over and saw him looking at me expectantly, I said, “Okay, but start driving because I can’t tell you and look at you at the same time.”
Lincoln obligingly started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Spill,” he ordered.
“So we never actually did really figure it out,” I began. When Lincoln glanced at me in fake annoyance, I put up my hand and continued. “But there was this one day after he and I had started… experimenting,” I said awkwardly. “We were looking at stuff on the internet to figure out how things between two guys even worked. We ended up on this site that had A LOT of videos on it. Too many to count. So we watched one, then another, and then it was like we went down this rabbit hole or something because we ended up on this video where two guys were…”
I felt like I was going to burn up from the embarrassment, but I also couldn’t stop the little giggles that kept slipping from between my lips as I remembered how Ford’s and my eyes had been glued to that little screen.