Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
I bend down so her arms go around my neck and I tighten my own around her back. She squeezes me hard and whispers, “You need anything, you reach out to me, okay?”
Christ, she smells good. I nod, even though I don’t have her phone number. I hug her back before quickly releasing her. She smiles at the doctor and slips out of the room.
Dr. Figler extends his hand and introduces himself. Ultimately, he doesn’t tell me anything new, but I think the prestige of me being a general manager from a professional hockey team fuels his special treatment. I don’t need it but if he wants to take extra special care of my mother, that’s fine by me. We chat for a few minutes as he goes through the technical points of the surgery and her expected recovery.
“She’s probably going to be sleeping pretty heavily throughout the night,” Dr. Figler says. “I’d suggest you come back in the morning.”
I rub at the back of my neck, strung tight with tension that wasn’t there before I walked into this room. I know deep in my gut it’s not caused by my mom’s precarious medical condition but rather from running into Juniper.
My first and only love.
My biggest heartbreak.
My brother’s wife.
CHAPTER 2
Juniper
Peering in through the glass window, I look at the meatloaf browning in the oven. It’s not the Crock-Pot roast with potatoes and carrots that had been on the weekly menu and I’m sure I’ll pay for that with caustic remarks about how bad dinner tastes later. Joshua and Preston won’t care that my ability to get the roast in the pot was impeded by poor Lila suffering a brain bleed.
Neither one of them will take kindly that I stayed up at the hospital all day when I should’ve been here making sure their proper dinner was on the table, but that’s my lot to bear. I don’t regret my decision because if a human being is going to undergo life-saving brain surgery, they should at least have one person to pray for them and be there when they open their eyes. At least, I’d hope someone would do that for me, but being realistic… Preston and Joshua wouldn’t have been there for me either.
When Lila awoke following the surgery, her relief upon seeing me was evident. She never would’ve expected Preston to sit and wait all day. Joshua’s a non-entity since he barely speaks to the woman who helped raise him. She’s beneath the air in his lungs that would be expended so it was no surprise to find only me there.
She uttered only one word, a question. “Callum?”
“On his way,” I assured her. Or so I overheard Joshua complaining to his father. It’s the only reason I knew Callum was coming in from Pittsburgh because Joshua would never dare discuss such a thing with me.
I do a quick check of the diced potatoes I have boiling to make a mash and I’ll whip up some gravy when I take the meatloaf out to rest. I’ve got candied carrots going in a pan, and that’s about as close to the original planned meal as I can get.
Most normal people would be pleased by my efforts, but Joshua and Preston aren’t normal. That father-and-son duo are the worst humanity has to offer and I’m imprisoned in this life under their thumbs.
The security panel in the kitchen chimes and I see Joshua driving his Audi through the iron gates. He’ll follow a two-hundred-yard-long winding driveway to our home.
Actually, his home.
More precisely, his home that he shares with his father and I’m residing here by virtue of our marriage.
This twenty-thousand-square-foot log home perched off Lakeshore Boulevard is where my husband grew up. When we got married, I simply moved in with him. The thing is so big, it has wings with stunning views of Lake Tahoe. Joshua and I live on one end of the home and his father and Lila live on the other. It’s definitely not how I envisioned married life, but if I look back on how I came to be here, I was groomed so slowly and sweetly, I practically locked myself in this cage and handed Joshua the key.
I take a few moments with my hands resting on the counter and practice my box breathing. My counselor highly recommends it for anxiety-fraught situations and sadly, my husband coming home from work—particularly today—is a stressful event.
I’m done with my fourth complete cycle when the mudroom door opens from the five-car garage. I move to the refrigerator and pull out a beer, twisting off the cap to have it ready as soon as he walks in the door. I have no illusions that this will mollify him but he’s going to drink a beer anyway, so I might as well have it ready.