Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 67120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 336(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 336(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Well, wasn’t that just a kick in the ass?
Not like it mattered, though.
Even if I was let go from this job that was somehow keeping me from going too far into the dark, I wouldn’t mourn it.
I honestly didn’t fucking care.
And I was caring less and less by the fucking day.
When I got home a couple minutes later, I was unsurprised to find my grandmother on my front porch, rocking away.
For the first time all day, I had a genuine smile on my face.
“Grans,” I said softly. “What are you doing here?”
Grans looked at me with a sad expression on her face.
“I just got word from your parents. They’re coming for an extended visit and want to meet for dinner.” She paused. “Also, they’d like to stay with me.”
My brows rose.
“What did you say?”
CHAPTER 5
Look at you getting all drunk and shit.
-Coffee Cup
MALACHI
Sierra,
So get this. I had some time to talk to my grandmother on the phone today.
While we’re chatting, she tells me that she has been so bored lately with nothing to do.
I idly suggest that she take my dog, Maxie, for a walk every once in a while because he has to be going stir crazy.
And you want to know what she said?
That that would be impossible because she’s living with my parents in Florida, and my dog Maxie is back home with ‘people I trust.’
I left Maxie with my parents. Which means that Maxie should’ve been in Florida with them—and my grandmother.
Turns out, my parents fucking lied to me. They said that they would watch over my dog.
What did they end up doing?
They gave him to a fucking shelter. But, not to worry, it was a no-kill shelter and that he was just fine where he was at. He was probably adopted out by now and would be ‘a-okay’ when I decided to return. As if I’d just decided to be deployed all on my own.
Then they’d told my grandmother—who would’ve bitched and complained about them leaving my dog—that I’d found a nice couple to watch my dog until I got home. So it’s literally taken me a year of being deployed in this sand hell hole to realize that my dog was taken to a shelter.
They couldn’t even have the decency of remembering which fucking shelter.
My grandmother is currently on the way home so that she can help find him.
I am so fucking lost right now that I want to scream.
Hope your week is going better than mine.
Gabriel
• • •
“Tell them to go fuck themselves,” I suggested.
“I did,” she said. “Those words exactly. And they thought I was joking. They called again an hour ago telling me that they were at the airport, and where was I at?”
I frowned. “You told them that you no longer have your license, yes?”
Grans was eighty-nine and seemed to be shrinking by the day. Though, that was likely just a figment of my imagination and not a reality.
Regardless, last year when I’d gotten home from being a prisoner of war, she’d had a minor heart attack. Since then, she hadn’t driven at all.
Some of that was my worry for her, and now I knew it was just her trying to make sure that I had a purpose in life—taking care of her.
I knew that she could tell that I was lost, but since I was so much like her—we alphas didn’t admit when we weren’t handling shit well—she knew better than to ask or confront me.
“They do,” she confirmed. “They didn’t come see you when you got home, and they didn’t come see me when they learned of my heart attack. As far as I’m concerned, they’re persona non grata.”
I laughed and went to the fridge and grabbed a beer. “Do you want one?”
She lifted up the beer that she’d stolen from my fridge and glanced inside the bottle. “I’ll take another one.”
I twisted the tops off of both and tossed the lids in the trash before walking them both to where she was sitting on my front porch.
“Anything interesting happening tonight?” I asked.
Grans didn’t leave the front porch much. Whether it was my front porch or hers, that was her favorite place to be.
According to her, if you didn’t know what was going on in your own front yard, how were you supposed to know what was going on in your own country.
Grans was a veteran.
She was a nurse in the Army during World War II, and went on to retire from there at the ripe old age of sixty-two.
She had three kids, two of which had died. The only one left was my father, and she didn’t like him all that much anymore.
She only had one grandchild—and that was me.
Needless to say, we were so much alike it was kind of scary.
“How’s your friend?” Grans asked.
Grans was talking about Sierra.