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)
“He wasn’t my boyfriend—”
“I don’t care,” I interrupted. “You asked me to give you time to make peace with yourself before you told me the rest of your secrets. A minute, an hour, a day… take a fucking lifetime if that’s what you need to forgive yourself. My love doesn’t come with a timer or a compass or conditions. Go anywhere you want, be anyone you want to be, put on any fucking mask you want. You can’t make me stop loving you just like I can’t make you keep loving me. Love isn’t a choice for me. It never will be.”
I wasn’t surprised when Theo didn’t respond. Desperation left me feeling even more raw and exposed than I had after I’d listened to my brother take his last breath. What if I’d gotten this all wrong? What if his feelings for me weren’t what I thought? What if he’d mixed up some kind of white knight syndrome with love and he’d finally come to realize it?
His continued silence fed into my growing self-doubt. I shook my head as I was forced to accept that maybe he was trying to tell me something without saying it. “Theo, if you want me to stop—”
“Don’t,” Theo whispered, his voice almost harsh as he finally turned around. He shook his head and wiped his face. “Don’t stop, Lincoln. Please, just don’t ever stop. Okay?”
“What happened after you used the morphine on yourself?” Theo asked softly. We hadn’t spoken much since I’d responded to his plea for me to never stop with one simple word.
Okay.
But he’d said everything I’d needed to hear when he’d closed the distance between us with a few long steps and then he’d been in my arms. I couldn’t say how long we’d clung to each other before he’d made one more request.
Take me home, Lincoln.
So that was exactly what I’d done. When we’d arrived at the house, we’d stopped long enough for Theo to say his hellos to Nacho who was still huddled under the house. Between me and Theo and the rest of the family, Puddles’ boy toy had been given multiple bowls of food, water, and scraps. I hadn’t said it but at the rate things were going, Nacho would very likely be too chunky to fit through the hole when he was finally ready to come out from the crawlspace and be in the house with the rest of his family… both the four- and two-legged kind.
After that, we’d gone to say our goodnights to the rest of the family who’d all been in the living room. Puddles had been sitting on Walter’s lap while her tiny puppies had been in a blanket-lined box that Ford had cut up in a way that Puddles could easily get into it but none of the puppies could roll out of it. Cam and Walter had been bickering about Puddles getting fixed the second Sawyer gave the all clear that it was safe to do so. I doubted Walter really had any issue with his little princess getting her tubes tied… he just enjoyed needling Cam. The one thing Walter was sticking to, though, was his belief that Nacho couldn’t be Puddles’ baby daddy since all the puppies were white. The old man still had his eye on Loki as the culprit even though Loki had been missing the necessary equipment to knock Puddles up since he’d been a puppy himself.
Theo and I had wisely escaped the conversation before we could get sucked in too deep and we’d been lying on our bed ever since then, just holding on to one another.
“How did you figure it out?” I asked.
“I could see you were holding something back when you told me about Rabbit. When you mentioned your dad not talking to you anymore, I figured that was something you knew would happen when you helped Rabbit. When he was gone, you knew you’d not only lost your brother for good, but your father too. Despite the way he treated you after he married your stepmother, you loved him. You love him still.” Theo’s fingers were twined with mine. He kept rubbing his thumb over mine in a soothing manner.
“Not a choice,” I murmured, then admitted, “I miss him so fucking much, Theo.”
“I know you do,” Theo responded. He clearly knew that for the first time I wasn’t talking about Rabbit because he asked, “Have you tried reaching out to him? Does he even know what really happened that day… that he almost lost both his sons?”
I shook my head. “He made himself pretty clear when he told me not to show my face at Rabbit’s funeral.”
“Did he ever see the video message from Rabbit?”
“No. I tried to send it more than once after the funeral, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want him to see his son like that.”