Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
A hairbrush, lipstick tubes, her wallet and phone fly out, along with one knitting needle. I rush to pick it all, stopping when I spot something barely hang on inside of it.
I scoop that into my palm and hold it against my chest. Tears well in my eyes.
“What is it, Gaines?” Berk asks as he takes over picking up Eloise’s belongings.
“It’s our book,” I whisper. “She must have taken it back tonight.”
I open it to page forty-two and spot the stain in the middle of the page that wasn’t there this morning.
It has to be from her tears.
She snuck into my apartment to take back what was hers, but she left behind my heart. I need her to wake up now and reclaim it.
Logan storms into the doctor’s lounge. “Give us the room. I need the room.”
I don’t move from where I’m standing next to Evan. That’s because I know that whatever Logan has to say is directed at me.
All I can do is pray that it doesn’t involve Eloise.
“I’ll go,” Evan says. “If you need me to fight him, I’ll do it.”
I know he’s trying to leverage the situation with humor, so I give him an appreciative tap on the shoulder.
As soon as he’s gone, Logan shuts the glass door.
“Gaines.”
“Don’t tell me she’s gone.” My voice cracks. “You can shut the fuck up if you’re going to say that.”
“She’s going to pull through this.” He walks toward me. “Her stats are better. The fall did a hell of a number on her ankle, but we’ll get that set. From what we can determine, that bracelet she’s wearing caused her head wound. She’s got a pretty substantial gash across her forehead but it’s being stitched up as we speak by Dr. Sufford. She came in just for it.”
Nicole Sufford is the best plastic surgeon in the city.
“You called in that favor.”
“My wife did.”
“Your wife?” I question him. “You’re married? To who?”
He laughs. “To a woman you work with everyday. I married Julissa a few months ago.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I take a step closer to him. “How is that not hot gossip around here? Everyone, literally everyone, thinks you’re single.”
“Her folks don’t know yet.” He shakes his head. “They’re on a cruise with limited access, so we’re waiting until they’re back in Florida to break that news and our other news.”
“Which is?”
He holds the palm of his left hand to the center of his forehead. “I’m going to have a son, Gaines. My little boy is arriving in six months.”
I tear up. “Jesus, Logan. That’s fucking amazing.”
“The guilt.” Tears stream down his cheeks. “It’s been suffocating. I wanted to save him, Gaines. I wanted to save Rudy.”
I drop the armor that’s protected me from our shared past for almost two decades. I wrap my arms around him. He clings tightly to me.
“I know the guilt,” I confess. “We let him down.”
He takes a step back to rub a hand over his cheek. “His folks have reached out to me. They told me to forgive myself.”
They’ve done the same to me.
Mr. and Mrs. Taake lost their only child when he was seventeen – when we were seventeen.
“Is it time?” he asks me. “Is it time to let him rest in peace?”
I tap the tattoo covering my bicep. Logan does the same to the one wrapped around his. It’s always hidden under his white coat or a button-down shirt. I only saw it once. That was the night of Rudy’s funeral when we convinced a guy who owned a tattoo shop on the Lower East Side to ink our late friend’s name on our bodies.
I rake a hand through my hair. “I know you blamed me for letting him near that river.”
“I blamed myself more for bringing the beer and weed.”
It was a recipe for disaster. Three teenagers on summer break with a penchant for pushing the limits. We took Logan’s dad’s car and headed to a river that our friends used to cliff dive from.
It wasn’t even a cliff. It was more of a hill, but you had to aim just right because the rocky shoreline wasn’t forgiving.
I went first and nailed my landing. Logan followed with a double summersault before he hit the water. Rudy Taake tripped and dropped headfirst straight to the shoreline.
By the time we got to him, his head was bleeding profusely and his heart had stopped. I performed CPR since my dad taught me months before. Logan ripped off his T-shirt to hold it against the wound on Rudy’s head, but it wasn’t enough.
Our best friend died that day,
Our friendship died the night we got the tattoos, when we argued about who was more to blame.
We never worked that out. Instead we walked away from each other.
“It’s time to let him sleep well.” I wrap a hand around the back of Logan’s neck. “Let the guilt go before you son gets here.”