Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 75248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
It wouldn’t fit. I knew it wouldn’t. Yet, I had to try.
I was having to try quite a bit lately.
Try to get out of bed. Try to eat lunch. Try to leave my house.
I was afraid to do all those things.
A: I didn’t want to get out of bed. When I got out of bed, reality pushed in. B: Eating lunch was what had gotten me there in the first place. I’d met Jensen while eating at my favorite restaurant. I’d thought we’d hit it off. I’d thought I finally found someone who I could be happy with. I was wrong. C: Leaving my house meant getting in the car. Getting in the car meant getting out of bed. Getting out of bed was hard on the best of days.
Therefore, I was tired of trying.
Tired of just about everything.
Except this man. This man standing in front of me wasn’t a bad guy. He was a good guy.
He was a biker. A man who had principles. A man who was taken.
Taken by the beautiful blonde who was waving at me from the car.
I waved back, then turned to Wolf.
“Leaving is my only recourse at this juncture,” I murmured. “If I don’t leave, I just might get to a place that’ll be a lot harder to get out of than this small town.”
His eyes sharpened.
“What makes you think that leaving will fix that?” he asked. “It won’t. I would know.”
I laughed softly at him.
“I don’t know if it’ll solve anything but, at this point, it’s not going to hurt to try,” I replied. “It was very nice meeting you. I appreciate all the help you’ve given me over the last couple of months.”
It wasn’t just a couple of months. It was eleven months, three days and two hours since I’d been rescued.
My final good deed had been done. And, with only Jensen’s sentencing remaining from this whole nightmare, I was free to leave.
Closing arguments had been given this morning, and I’d left before I could hear the verdict, because I couldn’t handle knowing what he got. Nothing would ever be long enough as far as I was concerned.
“You know it wasn’t a hardship,” he murmured. “Nathan’s going to miss you.”
I smiled at the mention of Wolf’s little boy.
He was a cutie, and someone from this small town who I’d definitely miss.
He’s not mine.
That was another reason I was leaving.
These people who’d insinuated themselves into my life wouldn’t be there forever. Eventually, they’d decide that what I had to offer wasn’t worth the work it took to uphold a relationship with me.
I was beyond broken.
I was crushed.
There was nothing that could put me back together again.
“Hey!” Hannah, Wolf’s pretty girlfriend, called from the cab of the SUV they were in. “Nathan has to pee! Let’s go!”
Wolf lifted his hand up in acknowledgement that he’d heard, and then turned back to me.
“If you ever need anything, I’m here.”
I smiled sadly at him.
My God, this man was beyond beautiful.
“I know, but I won’t be calling. Thanks.”
With that, I dropped down into the car I’d rented to get me to my new home.
New Orleans was my intended destination, but if somewhere else struck my fancy before I got there, I’d be stopping. Maybe to stay there for a few days. Maybe to make it my permanent home.
Who knew?
My eyes returned to the rearview mirror where I saw Wolf pull himself into the driver’s side of Hannah’s Jeep.
Hannah laughed at something he said as he got in, and my heart, what little of it there was left, broke.
***
Wolf
“What’s with the long face?” Hannah asked.
I looked over at the woman I was seeing. The one who’d been able to pull me through some of the hardest and darkest days of my life.
I’d tell her today.
Today, I’d tell her that this wasn’t going to work.
“She’s leaving,” I said as I drove Hannah’s Jeep to her house, which was about thirty minutes from mine.
I’d thought that nothing could get better than the night I’d realized that Hannah had moved from Kilgore to Uncertain.
It hadn’t been because of me. She hadn’t even realized that I’d been living in the area at the time.
What had turned out to be a surprise on both of our parts had turned into instant awesome.
Except, over the last six months of us being together as a couple, things had just…fizzled out.
The spark that was once there was now just friendship on my part.
I wasn’t sure what Hannah felt, but she deserved the truth, and now that I knew the fucker Jensen was going down for life with no option of parole, it was time to turn my attention to other matters.
Mainly to the fact that Hannah and I were together…but not really together.
In the six months that I’d been dating her, we’d yet to do much more than sleep in the same bed and spend time with each other.