Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138169 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138169 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
I wonder if that’s one of the ways I’ve never quite grown up, though.
Because I stayed inside, cooped up with my illness, I never made many friends. I never had the young, dumb experiences other kids did.
So did I really grow up at all?
Sighing, I crane my head back, gazing up at the clear night sky. The Milky Way glows overhead, the yawning universe with its necklace of stars framed by tall trees.
It’s like an eye opening up to let me look inside its jeweled colors. Breathtakingly beautiful, but a little lonely, too.
I just don’t know what I’m pining for.
A life I never had?
Some days, I feel like I only live for work.
It’s not that I don’t love what I do.
I live for feeling smoothly sanded wood under my fingers, the awl in my hands, the scent of sawdust. Grandpa’s workshop was where I first started to learn to control my breathing, so I could savor that scent without the dust triggering an attack.
So I could be with him, caught up in his warm approval as he taught me how to shape wood, how to etch, how to engrave, how to know the difference between carved designs and burned, and so much more.
For a child shut-in who spent half her free days at the doctor, he gave me a life.
Grandpa’s workshop was pure magic.
He was a sorcerer and I was his happy apprentice.
Still, I feel like I missed out on so much else.
Running and playing with other kids. Sports and band. Going to dances to peek at boys over my fingers.
Stealing young kisses behind the bookshelves in the library.
Even dating in college. I just never learned how.
All the little social rituals that turn into flirting and dates and kisses and more still feel like a mystery.
Anytime someone tried the first half of that call with me, I panicked.
Every time, I dropped the ball awkwardly and left the guy fumbling away from me with confusion. Like he thought he’d tried to win over a girl and then realized he was actually chasing some weird, gross bug.
Miss Grey.
Does Officer Ainsley see me the same way?
He calls me Miss Grey like he’s from another time. That doesn’t stop my mind from spinning daydreams about him in a waistcoat, lurking against a window with the moonlight in his eyes and reflecting off his deadly lips.
He almost looked upset when I asked him about his teeth.
But I get it.
For him, it’s part of what singles him out and makes him so different.
Just like my asthma.
He probably got picked on as a kid for his teeth and his albino skin, the same way I did because I couldn’t run or play or fight.
When I think about him that way—the real man behind the fantasy—it stops being this taboo thrill.
It just makes me hurt for him.
It makes me want to tell him it’s okay to be different.
And he’s definitely different from what I expect tonight when I hear a faint metallic jingle and look up, realizing it’s a dog collar.
Officer Ainsley makes his way quietly along the thin strip of grassy shore, his reflection mirrored in Still Lake’s glossy surface. He’s walking a German Shepherd that looks like a small bear—an older dog, I think.
The dog moves slower and a little unevenly, but Ainsley matches the canine’s pace, stopping when the dog wants to stop.
And when I stop and get a good look at him, my breath stalls.
He’s so normal tonight.
Almost rugged in dark jeans, dark hiking boots, and a deep blue and black plaid flannel shirt, the sleeves cuffed to his elbows. The open throat shows off stark lines of collarbones.
Instead of the side-parted sweep he wore earlier today, his hair is a little messy.
He might look perfectly ghostly under the moonlight, but the way he’s dressed, the way he moves, the way he looks down at his dog with his eyes brimming with clear affection?
It reminds me he’s a man.
Not some prop for swirling hormones and juvenile fantasies.
It’s nice seeing him like this, honestly.
And there’s also something else.
Something melancholy about him, like a human echo of Still Lake itself.
I don’t realize I’m straight-up staring until our eyes meet.
My heart lurches—and then tries to stop its frantic beating when he smiles.
Yes, he sort of smiled at me a few times this morning. But it was a curt, professional cop smile meant to put me at ease.
This is a small, reserved smile, too. But more honest, more real.
It also suits him better when he’s so quiet with his feelings and shows only as much as he needs to.
I try to smile back, but my lips won’t work. I can’t even remember to blink as he makes his way closer.
“Miss Grey,” he says, drawing into earshot.
“Hi!” I’m already mentally kicking myself.
Seriously, why am I freezing up?
To distract myself, I look at the dog because it’s easier than looking at him.