Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Bowe’s breath left him and I felt a moment of sorrow.
He’d been the one to first breach the building.
He’d found the girls, hurt and crying.
He’d been the one to pull the teacher off of my little girl.
He’d been the one to find the other two children lying right next to Elise’s unconscious little body.
But I wasn’t that sorry.
He’d been the one to put her in that daycare in the first place.
He’d been the one to convince me that she needed the socialization.
Well, he could’ve taken my baby away from me today and I wasn’t in a very kind, nor forgiving, mood.
“Bowe,” I said, not looking at him. “Do you think I could talk to you for a minute?”
I felt, more than heard, him follow me into the hallway, and shut the door behind him.
I didn’t bother to turn around to say what I had to say.
Seeing him would only make it worse.
“Today,” I breathed out a shaky breath. “Today I could’ve lost the only thing that matters to me.”
I heard him swallow, and only then did I replay what I’d just said in my head.
Did I backtrack?
Hell no.
I didn’t backtrack or apologize for what I had to say. I said what I needed to say, and then moved on. Which what I was about to do, whether it hurt him in the process or not.
“I’ve realized a few things today, and I’m sure you’re not going to like it.” I looked down the hallway.
He appeared at my side, and I saw him with both hands in his pockets.
He was filthy.
He’d come in about ten minutes ago, just in time for him to hear what the doctor had to say in regards to my child’s health.
A child that he’d put in jeopardy.
“I think, at this moment in time, I’m going to focus on Elise and me.” I couldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry, Bowe. But you’re going to have to find somewhere else to live. I can’t do this anymore.”
He didn’t say anything, and only then did I find the courage to look at him.
His face was utterly blank.
“You blame me.”
“I don’t,” I lied.
I so did.
He didn’t need to know that, though.
“You do.” He nodded his head. “For what it’s worth, I love that little girl as if she were my own.” He swallowed, then looked down.
My breath caught at the hurt that was floating around in those beautiful eyes.
“I would kill myself over and over again if it would make today never happen,” he declared. “I never, ever, wanted you to experience this, and I’m sorry that I inadvertently played a hand in your worst nightmare.”
And before I could call him back, he was striding back down the hallway, not once looking back.
“You realize, right, that my house was hit by the tornado,” my mother said softly, sounding disappointed.
“What?” I gasped. “No!”
She nodded her head.
“Yes,” she confirmed with a nod of her head. “If Elise and I had been there, we could be just as dead as those that perished today.”
I bit my lip.
“Food for thought,” she said. “But I didn’t raise you to take your frustrations and doubts out on other people.”
I looked away.
“It wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”
She hummed under her breath.
“Well, I guess you’ll never know with that attitude, now will you?”
With that parting shot, she left the hospital room, leaving me alone with my sleeping, alive, baby girl, and my horrible thoughts.
Chapter 20
Women don’t want a man’s opinion. They want you to agree with their opinions.
-Fact of Life
Bowe
After I came to my senses, I tried to call Angie, and she ignored every single fucking text, call, and knock on her door. I suppose I should’ve been happy that she’d at least let me take my belongings, which she so nicely set out on the curb.
“What would you suggest I do to get through to her?” I asked PD’s wife, July.
July smiled sadly at me.
“Angie has always been a very private person,” she apologized. “I never even knew she had a kid until you told me about her.”
I gritted my teeth and looked out the window of our project house.
PD, July, Able, and I had driven right in after the tornado destruction had made itself known in our small, quiet town.
We’d, unfortunately, been quite busy outside of work, and had been for the last two weeks.
Two weeks of hell.
We’d been busy helping our fellow Kilgore natives rebuild, and probably would be for a while.
The house we’d been working on had suffered quite a bit of damage, but we’d been able to turn it around and make it livable in about eight days.
We were now on project house number two, after the storm, and it looked like we were going to finish this one in the next hour as well.
“Doesn’t she graduate tomorrow?” PD asked, not sounding the least bit concerned that my love life was in the dumps.