Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
It wasn’t a tease.
It was deep and desperate and terrifying.
And I was sure, right in that second, I felt it down to my soul.
Milo roughed out a cynical sound as he stared blankly at the window opposite him. “Never should have asked you to stay here.”
“Because you don’t want me here?” I figured I should lay it out. Tiptoeing wasn’t exactly my thing.
He looked at me then, with that strikingly gorgeous fury that he kept locked down tight. His jaw was clenched beneath his beard, and he leveled me with a stare that made me both want to run and drop to my knees.
“No, Tessa, because of how much I do want you here.”
Severity crashed.
An intense awareness that swirled through the room.
It compelled me forward.
“You’re lonely,” I murmured.
The air shivered, and the racing of my heart turned erratic.
His attention dipped to his legs that were covered by a dark comforter, his big body this fortress that I could so clearly see had been damaged.
Battered and barraged.
The foundation cracked.
Pieces missing.
He rubbed the heel of his hand against the center of his chest. “It wasn’t supposed to go down this way.”
“What way?” I pressed, pushing for details as I floated toward him, so slow it might take me an eternity to get there but compelled all the same.
“That I would lose every single thing that I loved.”
“Your wife?” The question was a ball of sympathy I lobbed at him.
“Gone.” He bunted it right back.
I didn’t need him to clarify. It was written in the single word.
She was gone.
Forever.
He had no chance of getting her back.
Heartache pulled tight, and my feet kept shuffling across the floor until I found myself standing at the edge of his bed.
He looked up at me in a way that clutched so tightly that it yanked me down onto the edge of his mattress.
No longer able to stand.
He’d told me to make myself at home, but I doubted that had included me creeping into his room at night.
But I didn’t think there was a bone in my body that could have resisted the lure of his spirit.
The need to come here.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, refusing to look away from the harsh planes of his face.
I had the urge to sweep the pad of my thumb over the stark slash of his eyebrows, like it might be able to erase some of the strain.
A low, rough chuckle rumbled the air, a sound that came completely at his expense. “I’m sorry, too.”
Part of me wanted to ask what happened to her, but I wasn’t sure we were there yet. Pushing my way into a place he’d asked me not to go. But there was something about what had transpired earlier today that had the words escaping without permission.
“What’s going on with your kids, Milo?”
Driving his fingers through his hair, he inhaled a sharp breath. Tension rippled over his flesh before the gruff confession left his mouth. “I just want them back.”
“How did your in-laws get custody?”
Self-hatred filled his laugh, and his honeyed eyes dimmed, a thousand shades of black that raged in the shadows.
“After Autumn died…” His teeth ground with the pain that rocked through him.
An earthquake.
“Let’s just say I wasn’t in the best frame of mind.”
“Anyone could understand that.”
His laughter was hollow. “No, Tessa, not everyone could understand that. I…” He hesitated for a moment before he admitted, “I pretty much disappeared for a year. Fell off the face of the earth because I wasn’t sure how to walk it any longer.”
I gulped and forced myself to remain sitting, quietly waiting for him to continue.
“When I returned, I told them I’d gotten myself back together. That I was ready to care for the kids. But they fought me on it. Took me to court. The judge saw me unfit, citing the kids would be better off with them.”
“How could anyone judge in their favor?”
“Look at me, Tessa.” He gestured at himself.
Slowly, I shifted, climbing onto my hands and knees so I could crawl up to face him. Crisscrossing my legs, I reached out and curled my hand around the top of his.
Sparks streaked up my arm.
Attraction.
Want.
I guarded myself against it, tried to ignore it.
What kind of selfish jerk would think about him in that way when he was finally opening up to me?
He needed a friend.
Someone who supported him.
“I’m so sorry, Milo. I can see how much you love them.”
“I got one day of visitation a week,” he continued on a heavy rasp, like now that he’d started, he didn’t know how to stop. “One fuckin’ day, Tessa.”
His sorrow spun around me, tendrils that pulled me in his direction.
“And what do you want?” Somehow, it came out a plea.
His thick throat bobbed when he swallowed, his confession low and hard. “I want to be there for them. I want to be the one who tucks them in at night and the one who wakes them up in the morning to get ready for school. I want to be the annoying dad who makes fuckin’ horrible jokes and the same one who patches up their skinned knees when they fall down. I want to raise them, Tessa. I want them to know every day of their lives that they are my reason. The purpose I have to go on.” Desperation ground through his words. “I want them to know they are the meaning of my life.”