Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
The wary look on her face made sense, yet it stung. Gone were the warm, shy smiles from my best friend’s wife.
“Fiona needs to get on a later shift,” I’d told her, deciding there was no point in pleasantries right now.
Nora’s face transformed from hostility to surprise. I didn’t know what she was expecting, but that wasn’t it.
“She’s too fuckin’ tired and still fucking sick, and she doesn’t need to be starting that early,” I ground out. “She needs sleep.”
Nora tilted her head, regarding me with interest now. She was never really good at maintaining hostility. Too much of a nice person. Fiona ranted about it all the time, how she needed to call some customers bitches because they really were.
Fiona considered herself the ‘bitch guardian’ of Nora. Though I thought the woman could hold her own when she needed to.
“She does,” she’d agreed.
I hadn’t been expecting a fight on this, exactly, but I wasn’t thinking I’d get such immediate agreement. I’d come here pretty fired up.
“Well, then get her on a later shift,” I grunted.
Nora put her hand on her hip, and her brow arched again. “I can’t be certain, but I’m sure I’d remember if you were here when I opened this bakery—you know, the blood, sweat, tears, sleepless nights, fights with French distributors.” She listed those things off on her fingers. “Because if you had been there for all of that, you might have a right to dictate my schedule. Since you weren’t, you don’t.” Her voice was sharp, sarcastic, and I felt appropriately chastised.
Despite that, I ground my molars. “You care about her. You should know she’s not doing well.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I care about her,” she said. “I’ve been there for every doctor’s appointment, have held her hair back when she vomited, have reassured her that she wasn’t going to go through this alone.”
Nora’s words hit home, as she intended them to.
“Then get her a later shift,” I snapped, intending on turning around and leaving.
“She won’t take a later shift,” Nora snapped back. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Fiona is stubborn. She’s strong. And she’s not going to let anyone treat her different because she happens to be pregnant.” She looked me up and down in a way that suggested she found me lacking. “Well, she’s let her husband treat her differently, but that’s only because she has absolutely no control over him being an asshole.”
I was taken aback. Nora was obviously mad at me if she was ready to straight-up call me an asshole.
Which I was.
“Is there anything else?” she asked, tilting her chin up at me.
She was dismissing me.
I’d come here with the intention of doing something, fucking anything, to ease Fiona’s discomfort that didn’t involve me getting too close to her and fucking up both our shit like I had last night.
My hands clenched into fists at my sides. I wanted to punch something.
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing else.”
I’d failed.
Again.
I hadn’t expected the day to get much better after hurting Fiona before the fucking sun rose.
But I also hadn’t expected it to implode my fucking life.
We were on-site. A rare day when both Rowan and I were working together. He made it so that didn’t happen often. We still hadn’t spoken except on shit regarding work. He’d been leaning by his truck on the phone when I came out of the house to grab some more tools. My eyes just happened to go in his direction as I was carrying them back in.
Rowan got off the phone and walked toward me, his face grave.
The tools in my hand tumbled to the ground.
I knew something was wrong the second I saw his expression. Fucker had one hell of a poker face—I’d lost many a Benjamin to it in the past. But his expression struck fear into the core of me.
And the fact that he was walking toward me. Willingly. My best friend had kept his distance from me over the past few months.
It hurt more than I’d expected it to.
I hadn’t realized how much I relied on him. To keep me even. Stable. Keep me tethered to sanity, to stop me from spiraling into a destructive cycle that ended in me eating a bullet.
And the rare times I wasn’t being a miserable bastard, I just missed sharing a beer with the fucker.
Those times were gone.
“What?” I asked, my heart already in my fucking boots. I’d been here before, hadn’t I? I’d seen the face of a man who had to deliver world-ending news to someone. He’d been the one to deliver it to me five years ago.
“It’s Fiona,” he said, gripping my upper arm. “She’s been in an accident.”
And that’s when the bottom fell out of my motherfucking life.
Rowan was driving to the hospital.
I fought him on that.
“State you’re in, you’ll be arriving in an ambulance of your own,” he said in response to my protests. “Get in the fucking truck.”