Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
But then I’d gotten to know her.
This past week she’d definitely grown on me.
We’d both been hesitant when I’d come home that first night after seeing her newly acquired scars.
She didn’t know what to say to me, and I didn’t know what to say to her to make it all better.
I wasn’t sure that it could get better.
Hell, I knew that my situation would never be better.
But her situation, well, it could get better. She would overcome this. She would be stronger and better able to function at the end of this without the threat of impending doom hanging over her head.
Shaking off my morose thoughts, I parked the truck in a lot intended for doctors, not giving that first fuck if I took some doctor’s parking spot because there wasn’t another towing company around to tow me, and mine wouldn’t tow their own company’s vehicle. However, I’m sure that the hospital wouldn’t be amused that a towing company refused to come get it. And before they could call anybody else—which would have to be an eighteen-wheeler wrecker, seeing as my truck was so big and heavy—we’d be done in the hospital.
Grinning for the first time that day at the thought of pissing somebody off, I made my way inside.
I had to ask the receptionist which floor oncology—the cancer doc—was on. Once she directed me, I studiously avoided the place that I remembered going with Lily to. Doctor’s appointments and well-checks for our children.
I didn’t use the same pediatrician for Mary that we did for the other two kids.
Another doctor had recommended that I take her to see a doctor in Longview, a full hour away from where my other kiddos’ doctor was located, because he specialized in cases like Mary’s.
Not that Mary was a hard case. There were hundreds of thousands of people in this world with that extra chromosome that caused Down Syndrome. They had jobs. They lived normal lives. They got married.
Thinking of all the things that the doctor had shared with me when I’d first taken Mary to him, I made my way to where the aide had pointed me, arriving at the oncology doc’s door within two minutes.
I spotted Cobie across the room, head down, staring at her knees.
Not stopping to question why the hell I was there in the first place, I strolled across the room and then dropped down into the seat beside her.
She looked up, startled by a person sitting down next to her in a room full of empty chairs, and closed her eyes. The relief on her face was enough to make me decide to stay whether she asked me to leave her alone or not.
“Dante…”
I winked and leaned over to pull out my phone. “Figured it’s just as easy to sit in here as it is to sit out in the parking lot. At least this way I’m not wasting diesel.”
Cobie smirked and looked back down at her knees, then pulled out her own phone.
So that was how the next five minutes went as we waited for the doctor to call her back. Most of the time was spent showing each other funny memes. Mine came from my brothers. Cobie’s came from the Facebook.
I had never had, nor would I ever have, a Facebook account. I wasn’t all that interested in the world knowing so much about me. If someone wanted to chat or say hi, they damn well knew my phone number. And if they didn’t know, then they could come find me.
It wasn’t like I’d left town.
My house, yes. Town, no.
The cabin was nestled deep in the woods of Hostel, Texas located along the same river that had stolen everything from me.
“Look at this one.”
I grinned when I read it. Just a random question that an author who Cobie followed had asked.
Do identical twins have the same size penises?
“I’ll bet that identical twins aren’t identical everywhere. I used to know a few when I was in the military. Two of them were in the same unit as me. One was tall and slender while the other was just as tall but a bit stockier. Oh, and that Brock guy who works for Travis and me? The one who stopped by last night to bring me some paperwork? That guy’s a twin, too. You should ask him.”
She immediately shook her head, a smile creeping up over her face.
Brock was a good man, as far as I could tell. He was always on time. He always showed up for work, and in the brief time since I’d returned to work at Hail Auto Recovery, he’d been a stellar employee. My brother had done well hiring him.
However, when he’d arrived last night, his eyes had gone directly to Cobie who was situated on the couch, her eyes on the TV. She’d been snuggling with my daughter, both of them engrossed in a show that had been on ABC Family.