Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
“Isn’t that the bad guy from The Smurfs?” Gwen asked.
Cooter shrugged. “I dunno, but it sounded good.” She turned to George. “Dinky, scoot over there and check on those kids. They’re awful quiet and that’s never a good sign.”
George gave us a salute as he quickly shuffled away, and the moment he was out of earshot, Dylan appeared out of thin air.
“Coot! Why the hell are you calling that man ‘Dinky’?” She dropped her voice. “Is that a reference to something being small?”
Disgust washed across Cooter’s face. “Girl, please! You think I’d ever date a man with a small package?” She looked over at Gwen and waggled her eyebrows. “Trust me, he’s not dinky anywhere that counts. When I first met him, he was driving the smallest car I’d ever seen. I swear I thought I’d had a stroke, because it looked like he was sitting behind the wheel of a roller skate. So when he got out and I saw he was a piece of man meat, I marched over and asked him what the hell he was doing in such a dinky car. He replied that hopefully he’d be doing me in that dinky car, and I don’t know, the name just came to me.”
I couldn’t decide if I was more impressed with his comeback or horrified at the fact that that was Cooter’s pick-up line. Okay, that wasn’t true. I was impressed by both. I had to give credit where credit was due, and while Cooter was a fiery ball of crazy on her best day, she was also a lot of fun.
Angela tapped a knife to a champagne flute and announced, “The kitchen is just about to open and our girl needs to get back there. Spoiler alert: it already smells divine. But before she disappears on us in search of her first Michelin star, let’s have a toast.”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. It’s a café, Ang.”
“You never know. I hear the club sandwiches are amazing.” Angela shot me a wink.
I threw my head back, laughing. I didn’t have a drink in my hand, but I did have the only woman I would ever love at my side, a bright future ahead of us, and a life I was finally ready to fight for.
I lifted my imaginary drink in the air. “To Gwen, the most kind and beautiful woman I will ever know. Be it a friendly smile at a low moment, a hot cup of coffee when the world is too cold to sit in the rain, or a hug when your soul has been starved for happiness, Gwen is a giver who has offered all of us a piece of her heart. Most especially me. So, here’s to a future full of possibilities, a new beginning, and if we’re lucky, maybe even a piece of bacon on the side.”
Gwen
Nine months later…
“Hey, babe?” I called, walking in the back door, Fiona hot on my heels. “Is it on yet?”
“Just a few more minutes,” Truett replied from the other side of the room.
“FeFe,” Nate called, immediately dropping to all fours and patting the wooden floor.
Truett let out a grumble. “Can we not make FeFe a thing? It’s bad enough your mom puts her in dresses.”
When we’d gone looking for a dog to surprise Nate with for his birthday, Truett’s only request had been that we didn’t get a small dog. But one look at the sweet face of a four-year-old, five-pound Chihuahua mix and the tag on her kennel that read: Fiona, and I knew it was a sign.
She’d been surrendered after her owner passed away and came with an entire itty-bitty wardrobe. That crazy dog would tap dance beside her box of clothes, begging to get dressed, sometimes refusing to go outside without them.
Much to Nate’s dismay, Fiona had claimed Truett as her person, preferring him to either of us. It always made me laugh when we’d take her out in public. Truett, the world’s toughest and sexiest biker, toting around his pretty, pretty princess.
Right on cue, Fiona jumped on his legs, vying for attention, and he mindlessly scooped her into his lap.
“Traitor,” Nate whispered at Fiona as she wallowed on Truett’s chest. My son stood up and asked, “Can I walk to The Haven?”
Just days after the soft opening of The Haven, Truett had checked himself into a residential treatment program and spent nine agonizing weeks away. While we’d missed each other like crazy, neither of us could deny that those two-plus months had brought us closer together. During that time, we were forced to do the one thing we’d never done after his deployment.
We talked.
Laughing, crying, getting to know each other again, and rekindling the connection that had almost been lost, we spent hours each night on the phone. Every conversation made us stronger and healed wounds neither of us had realized we still carried.