Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
“Beatrice Anna McGuire, don’t you dare curse at me,” Fran says, clutching her imaginary pearls in earnest now. Her knuckles are white at the neck of her sweater.
“Guys, please,” Wendy Ann pleads from the passenger’s window, casting me a glance that’s both apologetic and pleading. It’s clear she wants me to intervene, but I already know nothing I say is going to make this better. “Let’s not do this right now. Tatum’s making prime rib, Mom. You love her prime rib, let’s just go and—”
“Quiet, Wendy Ann,” her mother snaps. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Binx. Or who…” She cuts a chilling glance my way that makes my balls inch higher, seeking shelter from the cold. “But you were raised better than this. You’re embarrassing me. And yourself.”
Binx emits a humorless laugh. “There it is. That’s all you really care about. How things look and whether the way I live my life reflects badly on you.”
“That’s not true,” Fran says. “I never—”
“Well, I’m sorry, Mom,” Binx says, her eyes glittering as she barrels on, “but I don’t care about that anymore. I never have. I’m sick of pretending I share your values. I don’t. I actually think a lot of your values are just as messed up as you do mine. So, we’ll just have to make peace with that and try to love each other anyway, because I’m done trying to be anyone but who I am. I start full time at the tattoo parlor next week. I’m going to be a tattoo artist.”
Fran emits a strangled yip of alarm, but Binx isn’t done yet. I know that—I can feel the unfinished business heavy in the air as she pulls in her next breath—but her next words still shock the shit out of me.
“And I’m going to be in love with this man.” She shifts her focus, pinning me with a look so raw and real, it connects like a fist to the gut. “I’m going to be in love with him for the rest of my life, whether he gets on board with loving me back or not. He’s the one for me. Just him. No one else.” She sucks in a breath, her brow furrowing. “So…there’s that. I’m sorry, Seven. I know I said I was fine with a fling before we went our separate ways, but I lied. I’m not okay with it. I want more. I want it all.”
She takes a step toward me, turning her back on her mother and sister, “I want to share my life with you and help raise Sprout and be a family. I want to spend every night with you and wake up next to you every morning, and I don’t give a shit that you’re older than I am. I honestly couldn’t care less.” She shakes her head, her eyes shining. “It doesn’t fucking matter. What matters is that I’ve never felt this way before, not with anyone else in the world. You make me feel so beautiful and smart and funny and…enough. More than enough. Just the way I am.” Her gaze searches mine. “I think I make you feel the same way. And if I do…isn’t that worth fighting for?”
Wendy Ann emits a soft “come on, man, say the right thing,” sound from the passenger’s seat, but my focus doesn’t waiver from Binx’s face.
She has me locked in, completely captivated. I’m not sure if we’re in the final scene of a romantic movie or in the middle of a slow-motion car crash, but I couldn’t look away if I tried.
She’s right, I do feel all those things.
I love her. I adore her. I want her to be my family more than I’ve wanted anything in a very long time…
But she has no idea how much harder things get as you age. Life piles on. It piles on and piles on, one crisis after another, until getting up after you’ve been knocked down becomes a Herculean task.
By the fifth or sixth or seventeenth time you’ve dragged yourself back to your feet, you’re getting up with kneecaps shattered by grief and the weight of a broken system strapped to your back. And sure, you keep going—you have a kid to raise, a family to support—but it’s soul crushing.
Everything inside you is screaming that it shouldn’t be this hard. That there should be more goodness in the world, more mercy, more forgiveness…
But there isn’t.
And avoiding pain becomes so much easier than reaching for pleasure…
I haven’t always been like this. I used to believe that I could trust my heart, my gut, to lead me to the person who was right for me. But that was before I failed my wife, before she died, before I dated half a dozen different women over the years and every relationship ended in disaster. Sometimes it was my fault, sometimes it was theirs, but no matter how many times I’ve tried, romance always ends in disappointment and pain.