Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 91438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
I could eat an entire bag of potato chips in one single sitting.
Something I’d only just discovered that I could do the day after I’d gotten out of prison.
Then my mind sobered, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t very hungry any more.
I’d done a good job these past few days forgetting about the reality that was my life.
Silas was a good distraction.
Actually, he was a great distraction.
I hadn’t had to drink myself to sleep for a good four days straight, thanks to Silas’ and his skills.
“So how have you been, honey? You haven’t stopped by lately. I’ve been worried about you,” my mother said, picking up a small container of coleslaw and digging into it with a plastic fork.
“I’ve been fine, thanks,” I said. “How’s work?”
My mother worked as a float nurse at the hospital in Shreveport.
She’d been a nurse there for nearly thirty years.
She and my dad met there in fact.
My dad had been hit by a drunk driver, and he’d been in the hospital with a broken femur.
My mother had been his nurse during his hospital stay, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“It’s good,” my mother said distractedly.
“How’s dad?” I asked, trying to get her eyes off Silas.
My brows furrowed.
My mother was staring at Silas with worry.
For some unknown reason, I wanted to step in front of Silas to block my mother’s eyes from him.
It was jealousy.
I was jealous!
Of my mother!
My mother obviously had some sort of relationship with Silas, the man I was sleeping with, and it was beginning to really rankle and unnerve me to know that she clearly knew him better than I did.
“He’s fine,” she said, finally looking at me. “He’s busy at work.” She turned away from me once again. “How’s your daughter, Silas? Is she doing well?”
Ok, so she also knew his whole family.
Wonderful.
“She’s good. Her husband got into a little trouble a week ago during a SWAT op. But he’s fine. She’s worrying over him like any good woman would,” Silas said around bites of his sandwich.
I really didn’t have much of an appetite any more, and I couldn’t handle watching this familiar, comfortable interaction between Silas and my mother any longer.
I put the sandwich down, minus the four bites I’d taken, placing it on to Silas’ plate.
“I gotta use the restroom,” I lied. “Be back.”
Belly got up when I did, and I was so grateful I could have kissed her.
Maybe she could feel my anger and confusion over the situation, this clearly unmistakable friendship that my mother and Silas somehow shared.
I didn’t understand whatever it was that was going on between them, and I wasn’t happy about it at all.
This meant I didn’t plan on coming back after I finished supposedly using the bathroom.
Silas and my mother didn’t stop talking as Belly and I left, and something about that enraged me.
They acted like they had a relationship!
And it wasn’t normal.
My dad was a territorial man. A very territorial man.
When I was sixteen, my mother had innocently smiled at another man, and my father had flipped way the freak out.
So given that fact, a fact that my mother was very well aware of about my father, what in the ever lovin’ hell was going on between her and Silas?
I walked down the street to the high school, remembering seeing volunteers disappear and reappear out of the gym doors, a gym that was completely separate from the falling down building surrounding it.
That’s where I assumed the restrooms everyone was using were located.
I was right.
According to the man sitting on the brick wall outside, I’d made the right call.
“Bathroom?” I asked him.
He nodded. “Walk in and take a left. It’ll take you right where you need to go. Just follow the line.”
Great. Just what I needed right then, a line.
But alas, that was the way it was, so just like a good girl, I went to stand in line waiting for my turn.
“All yours,” the woman that had been in front of me said.
We’d been chatting while we waited about how crazy the weather had been since the first of the year.
Something I hadn’t witnessed for myself until about a month ago.
The weathermen predicted this unusual weather pattern would continue for at least another ten days.
I didn’t think I’d seen the sun shining in well over a week, yet I’d still managed to get sun burned, even through the clouds.
Once I was done in the bathroom, I picked up Belly’s leash from where I’d hooked it onto the stall’s door and headed over to the sink.
There wasn’t any soap left, and I grimaced as I used water only.
“Gross,” I muttered as I walked out, wiping my hands on my shorts seeing as there were no paper towels either.
I smiled in mutual commiseration at the women waiting in the line and continued on my way, Belly at my side.
Wiping all other thoughts of my mother and Silas from my mind, I got right back into the thick of things, thoughts focused solely on finding more people.
Hopefully – preferably – alive.
And Silas could suck it.
Chapter 12
I may look calm, but in my head we’ve already made use of the table. The wall. And the bed, three times.
- Sawyer’s secret thoughts
Sawyer
Sixteen hours later, I was fairly certain that I couldn’t feel my toes.
My legs hurt so bad that I honestly thought I was going to die as soon as my back hit the bed.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Silas was mad at me.
Me!
What the hell had I done to him?
When he’d spent more time speaking with my mother during that fifteen minutes of barbeque, I realized something.
My mom and Silas had some sort of relationship.
And not only did it piss me off, since my mother was married, but it pissed me off because Silas was now with me, and he hadn’t said a word to me about him having a relationship with my mother.
“Who was the man you were talking to this morning?” Silas asked again.
Apparently, I’d spent too much time with the old guy for his comfort.