Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64362 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64362 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Smirking, I figured she’d always done that though. Even as a girl. When she walked into a room, everyone else faded.
Nina gently handed over Van, and Salem talked to him, causing his angry wails to soften. It was time for him to eat, so he’d start up again if she didn’t get him fed, but for a moment, his mother’s face and voice had him transfixed.
Like father, like son.
Brick slapped me on the back as he leaned against the bar beside me. “You did good. Probably gonna be the prettiest boy I’ve ever seen, thanks to his breeding, but we’ll make sure he’s a badass one.”
I grinned and picked up my glass to take a drink.
“Water?” Brick asked as if I had lost my mind.
“I’m driving my woman and kid. Yes, it’s fucking water,” I replied.
He nodded as if he still didn’t understand. Then he sighed and rubbed his neck. He did that when he was uncomfortable. I studied him, and he cleared his throat.
“I, uh, need to admit something to you,” he began.
I waited, curious as to what the hell had him so tensed up.
“That note, uh…the one, you know, that Salem said she left you at the shop…”
Yeah, I knew what fucking note he was talking about.
I nodded.
“I, uh, well, you were young. Your momma had just passed, and you were a wreck. You’d let that tramp suck your cock, and Salem catching you had you so torn up. I just…I hated to see you so wrapped up in a girl at that age. Boys grow up in their twenties, and they change. Their taste in women changes. Things…” He let out a heavy sigh. “I see now that I was wrong. Salem wasn’t just some girl. She wasn’t a first love. You’d found your one all those years ago, but I didn’t give you the letter because I was trying to help you out. You didn’t have a dad, and I thought if I had a boy, that was what I’d want for him. Freedom to grow up completely before getting all locked down to one female.”
I set my glass down and narrowed my gaze. “What are you saying, Brick?” I asked, not sure I wanted the answer to that question.
He hung his head, and his wide shoulders rose and fell. “I took the note,” he admitted.
A range of emotions ignited with that admission, and although my hands fisted, I didn’t move to do anything with them. This was Van’s baby shower, and I wasn’t going to ruin it by beating the fuck out of my oldest friend here for changing the course of my life.
He reached into his back pocket and slipped out a folded piece of paper. “I tucked it away to show you one day, when you had found the one. When you had fallen in love and settled down. I figured, at the time, you’d read the note and thank me. It was a mistake that I wish like hell I’d never made,” he said gruffly. The regret in his tone was heavy.
I stared at the folded piece of paper, unsure if I could handle reading it. Those memories and the pain I’d caused Salem were my darkest demons. We weren’t the same people we had been then.
Brick was right about one thing. I’d grown up. That boy was no more. I’d changed in all ways but one.
My soul belonged to Salem.
Finally reaching out to take the note from him, I said nothing. I didn’t think there was anything I could say that wouldn’t end with me putting my fist in his face. I held it in my hand, wanting to read it alone, but then what was the point? Brick had already read it. He was the only one who’d read it.
Glancing up, I looked across the room at Salem cuddling Van to her chest with the nursing-shawl thing she’d bought for my sake. I didn’t like the idea of anyone seeing her tits but me. She was sitting in a chair, laughing at something Goldie had said to her. My heart felt so goddamn full that I didn’t know how much more it could take without bursting the fuck open.
This note was our past. A piece of our story. Maybe if I’d read it, we’d have had this sooner, but you couldn’t change the past. Fate had righted the wrong.
Unfolding the note, I dropped my gaze to her neat script, slightly faded over time.
Rome,
I held out hope all summer that you’d come see me. That you’d change your mind once we had some distance. I didn’t bother you, but I thought about you every day.
I miss you.
I’ve been awarded a scholarship to Rhode Island College of Art and Design. It’s a full ride, and it includes a dorm and a meal plan. Vanna wanted me to go there so badly, and it seemed the in she’d had there came through.