Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 93307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
“So, how bad is her foot?”
“Honestly?” I glance over at Katy to make sure she’s still sleeping. “It was pretty bad,” I tell him on a whisper. “She needed several stitches and will have to use crutches for the next week, but the doctor is confident it’ll heal up nicely.”
“Must’ve been one hell of a seashell.”
“It was. Enough blood to make a good horror flick.”
He grins. “Yep. A passed-out Katybug is starting to make a lot of sense.”
“She’ll be back to ordering me around in no time, Kai. I’ll make sure of it.”
Kai offers a soft but genuine smile as he considers me closely. “My girl can be anxious and standoffish and even give you a real hard time, but…once she lets you in, she’s the best. There is no one like Katy. She has the biggest, most giving heart of anyone you’ll ever meet.” He chuckles lightly with a shrug. “And I should know. She’s been giving and giving to me and her mom since the day she was born. Scariest day of our lives, finding out we were pregnant with her.” He snorts. “She’s been taking care of us ever since.”
Realization of just how starkly different Katy’s and my childhoods were hits me like a ton of bricks. I had the world handed to me. Katy had to hold the weight of it on her shoulders.
“It’s hard to believe she’s going to be thirty tomorrow,” Kai adds in an almost tender voice, and his blue eyes turn nostalgic. “My baby girl is certainly all grown up these days. A full-fledged woman living her own life now.”
Holy shit, Katy’s birthday is tomorrow? I had no fucking clue, which makes me feel like an ass, considering how much Katy has ended up knowing about me. But knowledge is power, and now I know.
“Well, Mack, I guess I’ll try to give her a call tomorrow and just remind myself that I’ll get to see her soon when we make the big trip up to New York in a few weeks,” Kai continues. “Thanks for taking care of her. I’m going to update her mother Melissa on what’s going on, and just FYI, you might receive a panicked call from her at some point this evening.”
“Not a problem,” I reassure with a quiet laugh. “I think if I can handle getting Katy’s foot stitched up without her strangling me or the doctor, I can handle a call from her mom.”
Kai cracks up at that. “You know, Mack, you seem like good people. I’m happy that Katy had your help today.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.”
Kai offers a quick goodbye, and the call clicks dead a few seconds later.
And I’m left sitting there, in the hospital room with a sleeping Katy, wondering how this intensely honest feeling of being in the right place at the right time with the right woman came to be.
Monday, March 21st
Katy
The flesh of my cheek shakes as I wake, my eyes wincing at the strength of the Florida sun shining in through the windows of my bedroom.
It’s morning, presumably, and my phone is officially vibrating with a call from directly beneath my face, but aside from those two obvious details, I’m at a complete loss for my current state of being.
After tapping the power button to reject Anna’s call until my brain is functioning, I sit up in bed, slide the covers off my legs, and look down at my foot—which is absolutely screaming for attention.
Throbbing, nagging pain pulls at my wound, but the gauze is a fresh, clean white, having very obviously been tended to recently.
But as much as the care is apparent, the details of the whos and hows and whens aren’t so much.
To be honest, the last thing I remember clearly happened yesterday—when Nurse Donna gave me the morphine bait and switch. I don’t even drink more than a couple glasses of alcohol because I don’t like feeling out of control, and after one day at the beach with Mack Houston, I’m missing an entire…well, sixteen hours, maybe? I don’t even know what time it is.
Grabbing my phone from the bed, I check the time—nine a.m.—and am startled by the date at the top. It’s officially March 21st. My thirtieth birthday.
What a way to start the next decade—wounded, confused, and willing to claw my foot off with my own hands if it doesn’t stop hurting so bad.
I wonder what I was even like last night. And if I said anything embarrassing Mack Houston will almost definitely hold against me? Ugh.
I glance down at my phone again, as if it contains a portal to my answers. Sadly, I find none.
The home screen showcases several missed calls and text messages from my parents and Anna—two of her most recent feeling undeniably angry and coming in after I sent her call to voice mail—but the constant throbbing from my foot has made the decision to check in with them later a no-brainer. I know they’re probably just wanting to wish me a happy birthday, but right now, I need food, coffee, and pain medicine. And not necessarily in that particular order.