Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
But it hits me now why it bothered me so much at the time and why I’m still thinking about it to this day. It was because she was alone. There was a circle of emptiness surrounding her. It was a small circle and it only lasted for a few seconds. But it was there and it was real. Like her longing for… whatever, or whoever, was making a hole and, in that moment, it got a hold of her and took over.
I bring my hands up to her face and place them flat against her cheeks. “If I had one wish, Rosie Harlow, I would make it so that you were never alone. So that you were never unhappy. So that you were never scared. I would be there for you. Every single time.”
Her immediate response is a smile. But she’s confused, I think, about where this is coming from and why it’s comin’ out right now. She brings her hands up to cover mine, never breaking eye contact. “Well, that sounds like a dream, Amon Parrish. But if I never knew sadness, or loneliness, or fear then how would I know that you are my comfort, and company, and courage?”
That mouth of hers. The words that spill out drive me almost as crazy as her naked body standing in front of me. “You can’t have one without the other, can ya?”
She presses her lips together and gives her head a tiny shake. “No. Sad, isn’t it? But it’s the absolute definition of humanity to swing like a pendulum from one emotion to the next.”
I see her again, standing in that cafeteria. Just a few moments after her water broke when everyone rushed to her aid. Everyone but me, maybe.
It was a good day, it was a bad day.
But really, it was just like any other day. Because that’s what days are. Always some good, always some bad.
My body presses forward, leaning into her, setting her off balance. Her hands drop from mine so she can catch herself when she sits down on the chaise in the middle of the room. Then I sit next to her, leaning back against a decorative rolled pillow, and pull her on top of me.
She straddles my hips and when I reach up and pull out a pin, her long brown hair falls out of place and hangs down over her shoulders, tickling my chest as she leans forward just enough to slip me inside her.
We begin to move together, her smiling eyes gazing into mine. And it goes so slow. It’s something altogether different. This time is so separate from any other time, it’s not even sex.
And lovemaking isn’t good enough.
This time it’s heaven.
And I can’t help but wonder if it’s luck, or skill, or both that got me through the last twelve years. Because I can easily count to twenty and each number would represent a time I should’ve been killed.
Because Rosie Harlow shouldn’t be single. Someone should’ve made her theirs a long, long time ago.
But she’s not theirs, she’s mine.
And this makes me want to buy into it. The whole notion of what goes on inside that Revival tent. Not the carnival sideshow or the lies Disciple tells ad nauseam. But the rumble and the glory and the echo on the water.
Rosie and I are that echo, I think.
Something distant from those people we were, but also related.
Not a passing, or a coming, but an arrival. Which is something very different from either of the aforementioned things because an arrival is something new. Almost expected, but not really. Something you didn’t know you were waiting for.
I could’ve gone to her that day in the cafeteria. I could’ve acted. I probably could’ve made her mine right then and there.
But just like Collin and Lowyn, we weren’t the people we’d become. We needed these twelve years to grow and realize what’s important so we could come back together when the time was right.
Rosie was the very first person I saw when I got back.
Let it be a sign, the call to Revival says.
So I do.
I let her guide me.
She is my sign.
We lingered in the cottage for another hour, at least. But eventually we pulled ourselves together and I hung up her dress as she put her everyday clothes back on. We took her envelopes to the post office and then I walked her to her car, made her wait until I got my truck, and I followed her all the way back to Disciple, dropping her off at McBooms.
We had a nice kiss goodbye from my truck window and it felt a little bit like high school. But I’m still smiling about that kiss when I pull into Edge and stop at Ryan’s house before going home to see if my forensics came back from DC.