Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
A few minutes later, she turned her head and rested her chin on her hand to look up at me. “Shoot. I need to make a call.”
My body stiffened. The only person she could possibly have to call at this moment would be her date. My arms locked around her, and I firmed up my grip. Logical or not, I was jealous of the man she’d stood up tonight for the mere fact that she’d almost gone out with him.
“Could we at least wait until my cock deflates before you get up to call another man?”
Her brows furrowed. “Another man? What are you talking about?”
“Weren’t you going to call your date and apologize for standing him up?”
She lifted her head. “Wait. How did you know I was even here tonight?”
“Etta told me.”
Layla started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Etta. She played both of us. I’m supposed to be meeting her for dinner here tonight. She told me a story about how she ran into her husband here and said they came back every year on their anniversary—how when she was a little girl she always thought the place was magical, and then when she ran into the man she eventually married here, it confirmed it.”
“I vaguely remember that from years ago. They’d both get all dressed up and come here every year.”
“So it wasn’t that you suddenly figured out you loved me and couldn’t live without me, it was more like jealousy that got you off your ass to try to win me back.”
“Does it matter what it took?”
“You’re a jealous person normally, aren’t you?”
“I’m only jealous when people touch what’s mine, sweetheart.”
“But I wasn’t yours when you thought I had made plans for a date with a man tonight.”
I reached down and pulled Layla up from my chest so we were eye to eye. “You’ve been mine since the day we met. We may not have always been together, but that didn’t make you any less mine.”
Epilogue
* * *
Layla
2 years later
I came home to something rare—a quiet house.
When I’d left this morning to have breakfast with my dad and half-sister, the house was already chaotic. Gray and Ella were out in the yard by 8AM, working on the garden from hell. Freckles had rolled in the pile of manure they’d planned to spread on one side of the yard today and then dashed through the sprinkler on the other.
Nothing like having coffee with the smell of wet dog and cow shit right before going to share a meal with two people who still made me jittery.
A few months ago, I’d been out with Ella and run into my half-sister, Kristen, again. She’d invited herself to join us for lunch, and when we were done, I realized I’d actually had a good time. It had opened a door I’d thought was permanently closed, and we’d been taking things slowly ever since.
I dropped my purse on the living room coffee table and went out back. No one was in the yard either, but I couldn’t help laughing at the craziness I saw.
The house we’d bought in Brooklyn six months ago was a few blocks from where Ella had lived with her mother. I’d fallen in love with the neighborhood over the year and a half we’d frequently visited when picking up Ella. Max had surprised everyone, including the doctors, and lived for eighteen more months, rather than the three to six they’d told her was likely. Parts of that extended ride were paved with rough road—frequent hospital stays and heartache for Ella as she got older and really started to realize what was happening.
Ella had experienced so much change; it just seemed like one less thing she’d have to deal with if we stayed in the neighborhood she was already familiar with.
So, we bought a beautiful old brownstone with a small yard on a tree-lined street and decided to call Brooklyn home. Ella had shut down for a while after her mother passed, and Gray was desperate to connect with her. We both were. I’d suggested that maybe the two of them should come up with a project to work on, which would give them a reason to spend time together. Gray had broken out the blueprints for his mother’s garden, the one they’d never had the chance to plant together, and that he’d flown out to California to plant around her burial plot.
I looked around our yard. In one corner was his mother’s garden—complete to her specs with all of the trees, flowers, and plantings she’d designed twenty-five years ago. That project had drawn Ella back out, and Gray wanted to keep going. So, the two of them had decided to design their own garden—just like he’d done with his mother when he was little.
They’d spent most nights for more than a month designing it. On weekends, we’d walked around nurseries and garden shows, which frequently led to plan redesigns. Now they were on phase three of the planting. I didn’t even want to know the value of everything planted in this crazy yard. I was pretty sure we had at least a car back here. But what it had given Gray and Ella, you couldn’t put a price tag on. Her healing and their bonding was worth any amount of money.