Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Ice cream and sleep it is, then.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Traveler
I was a terrible person.
I mean, I usually prided myself on the fact that I believed I was a pretty good human.
But when the call came through from the hospital telling me that, basically, my father was up and back to normal, the dominant feeling I got was… dread.
It didn’t take a genius to understand why, either.
Because if my dad was up, and he was his usual self, then I knew he was going to sign himself out of the hospital as soon as possible, then get to work on making the guys who attacked him—and me—pay.
Which meant I would be safe, and didn’t need outside protection anymore.
That meant that August was going to leave.
Go back to Navesink Bank.
Get back to his real life.
And I would never see him again.
I should have been okay with that.
Happy, even.
Since I didn’t want anything serious. I didn’t do serious. I liked my life exactly how it was.
Or, at least, I did.
Now? Now I wasn’t so sure.
I don’t know if it was simply that I’d always kept myself so busy that I didn’t get a chance to slow down and realize my life felt incomplete or what, but that was suddenly how it felt.
Away from the shop, I got a chance to relax, to unwind, to actually get some sleep.
I watched TV and movies.
I had long, lingering meals with August and Aurelio sometimes.
I got to snuggle into August in bed then wake up in his arms the next morning.
On top of all of those experiences, there was the idea of other things.
Listening to August talk about his family had opened me up to my own desire for one. I couldn’t tell you if it had been hidden before, or if it just hadn’t existed. All I could say for sure was now it did.
I wanted big, loud Christmases.
I wanted people to call and check in on me.
I wanted someone to give a shit that my birthday was coming, or that I was under the weather.
I wanted to have people that I could bake cakes for and make soup for when they were under the weather.
I wanted a good man to fall asleep with at night.
And maybe a couple of babies to continue the tradition on with.
So once August was gone, some part of me felt like he was taking all of that with him.
I knew me. I knew exactly what would happen once he was gone. I would throw myself back into work and my causes. I would drive myself into the ground until I was so physically and mentally exhausted that I didn’t have time to think about what was missing.
That cycle would continue until the clock ran out on those things I now realized I wanted.
Then what?
I would be a lonely, bitter old lady in a nursing home with no one to come visit me, and no one to carry on my memory.
What a depressing thought.
The Grassis never forgot anyone.
Just the other morning, Aurelio had both August and I almost in tears with a story his father had told him about his great grandfather.
That was a nice thing to have.
A family.
A legacy.
And my dad being better meant all of that was slipping through my fingers. I could try to hold onto it. But it would only slip away faster. Until there was nothing left.
I knew I was off after the visit with my father.
I could see it in the way that August’s gaze kept sliding to me, brows furrowed, curious or concerned, but not wanting to push me.
For a guy who was all about poking and prodding and pushing, he did seem to know when to just let me have my mood, allow me to process.
I needed it.
If this was the beginning of the end, I had to start to wrap my head around it. I had to steel my heart to it.
That heart?
Yeah, it had started to get all kinds of ideas about August. Things that could never be.
My life was here.
His was in Navesink Bank.
Besides, he would never want me for any length of time. Sure, he found me amusing now. Pressing my buttons, getting a rise out of me that inevitably ended with us being sweaty and spent.
But no man wanted that forever. I would grate on his nerves. Then he’d begin to resent me. Then want me gone.
It was always going to end.
I just hadn’t anticipated that it might end in heartache.
That was what this was, too, I realized as I rubbed a hand over my chest in the tub. Heart ache. It ached.
Because somehow this thing with August had turned from harmless fun, just a way to waste some time during a frustrating situation, to… something else entirely.
Now it was ending.
And it hurt.
And I didn’t know what to do about that.