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)
The other year, I’d only surfaced if one of them was hurt, which made me a pretty shitty brother if you asked me.
Their calls had been among the ones that I’d ignored, multiple times. Hell, multiple wasn’t even an accurate description to cover how many times I’d ducked one of their calls. If I had to guess, it was hundreds, maybe even thousands, of calls that had gone unanswered by me. Ninety-nine percent of them had been from my brothers.
As I drove to my house, the one that I’d once shared with Lily, I contemplated what I’d do once I got there.
I had a way into the bathroom, but that way required me to climb up the back side of the house and enter through the window. A window that was locked, but I knew how to jiggle it just right to get it open—something I’d found out after Lily and I had locked ourselves out of the house one too many times.
First, I’d try to get her to open the door the normal way, and if that didn’t work, then I’d do the climb and hope I didn’t die trying.
But after knocking on the bathroom door for a few minutes without a reply while Hannah looked on worriedly, I chose option two. Partly because I didn’t want to mess up the door. It was an antique that Lily had lovingly restored. It was tattered from years of abuse before we’d gotten it, and she brought it back to life. I couldn’t break it down—I just didn’t have it in me.
So, with no other choice, I walked around the back of the house and looked up at the window on the second floor.
This hadn’t been easy the other times I’d done it, but with a bit of elbow grease and some determination, I was able to hoist myself up and over the ledge of the house.
I managed to get all the way to the top before I looked down, and doing that made me wince, which had to be why I didn’t bother actually looking into the bathroom through the window until I had already jimmied it open and was shoving my body through the way-too-small window.
And when I finally did look up at her, I completely froze in my tracks.
I sat on the window ledge, eyes glued to the woman standing in front of the mirror. Tears were streaming down her face and trailing all the way down her naked torso, over her belly and soaking her panty line.
“Do you think,” she whispered. “That it would be inappropriate for me to go topless at the beach?”
I thought about the question before I shrugged. “Probably not inappropriate, no. But I do believe that people will stare. If you don’t want them to stare, then I’d cover it up.”
I hopped down from the window, trying my level best to not look at her body, but…I failed. I also didn’t know what the protocol was when it came to staring at a mostly naked woman who had just undergone a double mastectomy.
Should I avert my eyes? Should I stare at her and act like I wasn’t doing anything wrong? Pretend that there wasn’t anything missing?
I don’t know what the damn protocol is for this kind of stuff.
“It looks and feels weird,” she whispered, lifting her hand and pointing at what I was trying valiantly not to look at. “I was a thirty-six C before. I didn’t have big boobs, but they weren’t small, either. They were normal boobs, but now, they’re just…not there anymore.”
I stared at her breasts, or what was left of them, anyway. And there wasn’t much. Not really. Mainly just the painful looking scars where her breasts used to be.
The drains that were coming out of each side of her chest wall were drawing more of my attention, and I couldn’t help walking up to her side and reaching for the drain that was well on its way to half full.
I’d never actually done anything like this before. The only medical-type things I had ever done had been while I was in the military, and they had been more trauma related. Lately—just last week in fact—I’d had to put a Band-Aid on Mary’s newly skinned knee.
She didn’t move a muscle as she watched me perform my newly acquired skills, and I kept glancing up at her face, wondering if she was going to say anything.
She didn’t disappoint me, only it wasn’t what I expected to hear her say.
I thought she might’ve come out and said that this was incredibly awkward, which it was. Or maybe that she was hurting, which I could tell was happening beneath her carefully void exterior.
But what she said instead was, “I’m going to go home today, and I don’t want you to feel bad when I do.”