Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Boomer had picked her up and moved her to the guest bedroom. Now he was back, and the TV was off. It was the two of them since the dogs had followed Lou, the cat had bedded down for the night, and there was a covering over Molly’s cage.
Just her and Boomer, and he’d opened a bottle of wine.
What the hell was she doing?
She’d kissed the man. She’d promised herself she would walk in and ignore the whole he-didn’t-have-a-girlfriend-thing because Noelle had to be wrong.
And then she’d melted the minute she realized he was talking to Lou about her.
Most adults she spent time with either ignored Lou altogether or treated her like she was the golden child and must be held up on a platform like some work of art. No one simply treated her like a kid.
It was time to think about the fact that maybe she’d been hanging around with the wrong people.
“So Mae’s going to stay at Erin’s house?” It seemed like the safest subject. She took the wineglass from him while he set down his bottle of beer.
He looked so good in the low light of the lamps. She’d only turned on the one, and it cast a warm glow through the room.
He cast a much warmer glow over her whole world.
He turned, moving that massive body of his with grace. “Yes. She’ll stay there while they work on self-defense, and then she’ll move somewhere else. Big Tag wants to keep her moving for a little while.”
“Because someone wants to hurt her.” She’d pieced together a little of the story from listening to Boomer’s friends.
“I don’t know if that’s the real reason. With Kyle gone, there’s not a lot in it for Julia. I think Ian doesn’t want Mae to be alone,” Boomer said. “I think he wants her to remember that she’s got a family who loves her, and that love isn’t dependent on Kyle being around. You want to talk about a man who takes in strays. That’s Ian, and he knows how to keep us all together.”
She’d noticed that. “A bunch of your friends are more like family, aren’t they? Because they don’t have family.”
It was something that fascinated her. She’d been an only child and then she’d lost her dad and her mom had “found” herself and walked away from her daughter. For most of her adult life, she’d only had Dennis, and there hadn’t been a ton of warmth there. Lou was her family, but she was starting to realize she might need more. They both might.
Lou might need a man in her life who understood her. Boomer talking about Lou, about how she shouldn’t be gaslit by the adults in her life was what had made her throw all caution to the wind.
She tried to keep her own pain hidden, but her daughter was smart. It wasn’t fair to lie to her. Boomer was right about that. No matter how well intentioned the lie was. This wasn’t some little white lie about how her hair looked. It was about how her mom was doing. How could Lou learn to trust her instincts if her mom constantly threw up walls?
And how would she know it was okay to not be okay if her mom never let her see it?
Having people to talk to had made it easier to acknowledge her own emotions. She felt more like herself than she had in years, and she wondered when she’d lost the open, happy woman she used to be.
“I think a lot of people who go into the military end up finding a family there. Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of soldiers with great families behind them, but it’s also a place to go when you don’t have anywhere else. And it’s a place where you learn to share, and I don’t mean MREs. The guys in my unit used to take me back home with them when we were on leave. Someone would offer me a place to stay, and their moms and dads took me in for a while. Then when I joined the CIA team, there were a bunch of us with no real ties to the outside world. I think that’s why we were recruited. So the couple of guys with families would take us all with them. Hutch and I have no one, so we fell in together. Ian acts like an asshole half the time, but he’s like everyone’s big brother. He’s obnoxious, and he’s always there when we need him. It’s good to have people to count on. It’s good to have people counting on you.” He went quiet for a moment. “I meant what I said. You don’t have to date me for me to be your friend. It’s okay if you don’t want to. I’m not a man who can’t hear the word no from a woman I like.”