Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
I believed the opposite, that it made us strong, and when I let go and gave in to the tears, Crow was right there with me, crying for the boy he’d been and all he’d lost, but hopeful too, I thought, in our future together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Crow
It felt like I blinked and the snow was melting. We’d spent the last of winter fucking, working on the truck, and painting. Our nights reading together and playing cards.
I still liked to do the cooking, but I trusted Cyrus to make food for me. He took Sundays as his day—while Cyrus liked the control I still needed, he also didn’t want to only do the taking. His words, not mine. I didn’t see it as Cyrus taking from me. He gave me more than I could ever give him.
I enjoyed feeding him, not just by making the meals, but feeding him from my hand, which had now become part of our life. Not every day, but we both felt it when the other needed it, wanted it, and like everything else between us, it slipped into place perfectly, this thing that was always meant to be.
We had retrieved the snowmobile, but it was shot and would need parts to fix. I could likely do it, but it was something that had to wait until we went down the mountain again…which brought me to today. I’d been dreading this day for months, probably since the first day I brought Cyrus up the mountain with me. It was time to go into Tranquility. Cyrus had things to deal with, a life to sort out. I trusted him, believed in him, but a part of me would always fear that he would wake up one day and realize he didn’t belong to the mountain the way I did. And that I would have to leave it because now Cyrus was my true home.
“Are you okay?” he asked as I drove. My only answer was to tighten my hands on the steering wheel and nod.
“The words are trapped? That happens when you’re emotional.”
The way this man understood me, the way he supported me, made the chaos in my soul begin to ease.
I gave another nod. He deserved to know what I was feeling.
“I’ll be okay, Crow. I’m not going anywhere. Ever. I promise.”
“I wouldn’t allow it.”
He chuckled.
“I wouldn’t.” Because I would go with him.
“Good. It makes me feel wanted that you would never let me go. While everyone else threw me away, you cherish me. It gets me horny.”
This time it was me who chuckled. He could always unwind me when I was strung too tightly.
“I’m going home with you, Crow. I will always go home with you. We belong on the mountain together.”
Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe it wasn’t smart. There were things we had to figure out. That was proven by me getting sick and the wreck, but the mountain was ours.
We didn’t talk much the rest of the way down. The plan was to go to his apartment. We were going to pack it up, and what we didn’t bring up the mountain, we’d donate or take to the dump. Once we had the apartment cleaned, Cyrus was getting out of his lease.
He was planning on meeting Melody for lunch while I went to pick up the parts I’d ordered for the snowmobile, which were at the post office. Then I’d make a trip to the hardware store.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go with Melody and me?” he asked when we got to the apartment. It already felt like I didn’t fit in my skin, like my whole body was in a cast and I couldn’t move. It was like that every time I left home.
I grunted out my reply.
“She wants to meet you…”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Not… I can’t…”
“Maybe one day,” Cyrus replied, and I nodded. One day I would find a way to give him that. He deserved it, but I couldn’t yet.
“Have you ever been to a restaurant?”
My head whipped in his direction. I was scandalized by that question. Cyrus laughed, clutching his stomach as the sweet sound fell from his lips.
“Okay, dumb question.”
It wasn’t as if Chosen had ever brought us to one, allowed us to go to one, and I refused to eat out when I was in foster care. How could I ever trust people to make food for me like that?
But it was something Cyrus would want to do sometimes. Just another thing to figure out.
We went into his apartment. It smelled musty from not being lived in. We spent the next couple of hours working together. We had just gotten the back of the truck filled for me to take to the dump, when Melody arrived in Cyrus’s car.
She gave me a wave from inside, and I appreciated that she didn’t get out, likely because of the man standing beside me. He would have warned her for me.