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)
Gene was suddenly there, touching Paula’s arm. “Come on, sweetheart. Now’s not the time for this.”
She shrugged him off, and hateful tears brimmed in her eyes when she angled toward me. “How dare you think you deserve joy when you’ve stolen mine. How dare you move on after you did what you did. Just leave us alone.”
Her accusation nearly knocked me to my knees.
The truth of them.
Why I couldn’t have what my heart kept aching for.
And there I stood, squeezing Tessa’s hand, anyway.
“Dad!” Remy’s sweet voice suddenly powered through the air from where she’d seen me from the top of the playground that was fashioned to look like a castle.
My chest squeezed tight.
Love erupted.
Overflowed.
“I’m sorry, Paula, but you know that’s not going to happen.”
I gave Tessa’s hand a tug before I released it and leaned down to pick up the cooler and everything on top.
“Come with me,” I told her.
I rounded Paula and strode with the whole pile toward the call of my heart.
My kids.
Tessa kept up at my side, her mouth pinched and dread spinning from her spirit.
“I’m so sorry,” I muttered under my breath.
“It’s okay,” she whispered back.
It wasn’t. But there she was, refusing to leave me.
Scout came blazing out from a tunnel slide, all bouncing brown hair and bright eyes and these giant lips that were so cute my heart twisted in a fist. My Remy Girl was right at his heels, the child tall for her age, lanky, her spirit reserved and intuitive and the best sight I’d ever seen.
And I was dropping the cooler in that spot and rushing that way, falling to my knees on the grass at the same second my kids were colliding into me.
“Dad! Dad! You got here!” Remy’s arms encircled my neck, and my arm went around her waist.
I breathed out the weight sitting in my chest as I hugged her close.
Relief.
Relief.
Scout was all giggles as he threw himself onto my back. “You’re a dad-sammich. Right in the middle of me and my sister.”
My other arm wrapped around him, holding him tight against me, and I wished for a fucking miracle that I would never have to let them go.
Remy swayed me back and forth, her thin arms as strong as steel. “I missed you so much.”
“I missed you, too, Rems. So much.”
“Then why does it have to be so long for me to see you?” Confused distress filled her voice.
It drove a blade of pain deep into my soul, and I breathed out, just hugging her because how the hell did I answer that?
“I thought about you every second,” I finally said.
“Me, too!” Scout piped in from behind. Thank God he hadn’t quite figured out the distance the way his sister had.
He didn’t remember his mother, our family, the way it had once been, and I was afraid it was the ghost of it that was going to haunt Remy for the rest of her life.
“You did, huh?” I tried to tease and keep the heaviness out because I didn’t want to waste a second of the time I had with my kids.
“That’s right, Dad. All’uve ’em. Every single one,” Scout said in his adorable, slurring voice.
It flooded me with an adoration so intense it physically hurt.
This ache in my soul that only abated in the moments I got to spend with them. I ignored the thought they kept abating when I was with Tessa, too.
I couldn’t go there.
Couldn’t lose sight.
I relished in holding on to my children for the longest time, my eyes squeezed tight as I savored the connection.
In the midst of it, I could sense the presence hovering off to the side.
Warmth and affection.
The light.
The rising of the sun.
And fuck, it was so wrong, the way I felt when I shifted my attention that way, when I slowly peeled my children off me and tucked Remy to my side and drew Scout around so his back was against my chest.
My chest that felt like it was about to blow.
Tessa stood about ten feet off, a hand pressed to her throat like she was trying to stave off the emotion vying for a way out.
It radiated around her, anyway.
Bright, blinding rays.
Shocks of fiery red hair whipped around her face, kissing her freckled cheeks, her mouth set in a soft, red bow.
But it was those eyes—those sea-blue eyes that were filled to fathomless depths with a devotion I didn’t come close to deserving.
I attempted to clear the roughness from my voice, but it scraped when I murmured, “There’s someone really special I want you two to meet.”
Remy shifted into me when she realized I hadn’t come by myself, her cheek pressed to my shoulder, the child hiding behind the thick locks of her brown hair as shyness took her over. She warily peered out at Tessa, who remained floating at the fringes of my broken little family.