Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
I felt sick, close to throwing up the milk I’d savored only minutes ago.
“He’d bought these guys from a breeder in the UK. When he told me he was on a waiting list for two puppies, I told him he was a dumb fuck who could barely take care of himself…They were delivered the day after his funeral. His brother didn’t want them, so I kept them.”
Cupping both furry faces between my hands, I planted a kiss on each one of their big heads. “I’m sorry, Scott.”
“Yeah,” he said with a faraway look on his face I didn’t like one bit. “Me too.”
I watched the snowfall, digesting everything he’d told me. The picture was finally coming together.
“Is that why you left? Because you didn’t want to be reminded?”
He took his eyes from the snow and placed them on me. “Because I didn’t want to wind up like him.”
Chapter Seventeen
Scott
I heard the music blasting through the house as soon as I stepped into the hallway attached to the garage. Aretha Franklin, by the sound of it. Which was why the dogs weren’t at the door to greet me. She’d been gone two weeks and it felt like a hundred years. I was beginning to hate this house when she wasn’t here.
Shucking off my jacket and work boots in the mudroom, I followed the trail of music and the scent of vanilla into the kitchen. My wife was home. At the threshold, my feet stopped and my pulse raced.
Sydney was dancing with the dogs. Her hair was piled up on top of her head, hanging to the side. The ubiquitous Yale Law sweatshirt, which my dick and I had seen too much of, was falling off one shoulder, her legs bare. She’d stopped hiding them from me the night we returned from the hospital.
She held a wooden spoon to her mouth like a microphone and lip-synched I Never Loved A Man, her face animating every syllable, while Juliet barked and Romeo pranced around.
“You’re a no-good heart breaker
You’re a liar and you’re a cheat
And I don’t know why
I let you do these things to me
My friends keep telling me
That you ain’t no good
But oh, they don’t know
That I’d leave you if I could.”
Sheer awe filled my chest. I would’ve sworn on a Bible that I’d never seen anything more captivating. And it wasn’t that she was having the time of her life, or that she was drop-dead sexy in nothing but an old faded sweatshirt. It was so much more than that. Something that went deeper than skin and scars.
Despite what she’d suffered––something so fucking horrendous it had left a reminder on her gorgeous body––she believed that she was lucky. Lucky, for shit’s sake! She laughed like life was not only good, but good to her. The depth and breadth of strength my wife possessed astounded me. Not because of what she’d suffered, but because of her willingness to meet each and every day as if she hadn’t.
“Ready…here comes the second verse,” she said to the dogs, unaware of my presence. I curled my lips around my teeth to stop from laughing at the weird, jerking moves she made while she danced. On the plus side, the knee seemed to be completely healed by the looks of it.
“Don’t ya never, never say that we were through
Cause I ain’t never
Never, Never, no, no…loved a man
The way that I, I love you
I can’t sleep at night
And I can’t even fight
I guess I'll never be free
Since you got, your hooks, in me.” Aretha’s voice drifted out of the sound system loud and clear.
I wanted to go to her. I wanted to be part of this…this feeling. Anybody who got near her got sucked into it. I saw it with Laurel, Drake, and Ry––even my father had gotten caught up in her orbit. I’d been living under a cloud since Charlie died. Eight long-ass years. I just hadn’t known it until something bright and shiny walked into my life, lighting me up and making me see what I’d been missing.
I love this woman. The realization punched me in the chest. The one that followed was even scarier. I wanted her to love me back.
Romeo finally noticed me standing in the doorway and trotted over, Juliet joined him shortly after, their tails whipping back and forth. Sydney’s eyes met mine, wide and full of surprise, the wooden spoon frozen in place near her mouth. I was done playing games, pretending I wasn’t up all night thinking about her, jerking off every morning to fantasies of what I wanted to do to her.
“I missed you.”
Her face softened. “I missed you too.”
Brushing the dogs away, I walked up to her, took the wooden spoon out of her hand, and chucked it over my shoulder. The dogs went chasing after it. Then I took her face in my hands, cupping her cheeks, while hers came up to gently cover mine and her thumbs brushed against the inside of my wrist.