Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Any people.
But the man beside me wasn’t just “any people.” And the fact that he was so far from the house where he was unlikely to run into any of his quasi-family members suggested he might be in the very same boat as I was.
Alone.
Hiding.
Better at wearing masks than I’d given him credit for.
So even though my brain was once again telling me to walk away, I ignored the voice and acted on pure instinct.
I reached my hand out and covered Lincoln’s twisting ones with my own. The gesture was meant to be a reminder that he wasn’t alone, and I’d only expected him to stop gripping his hands together so tightly, but to my surprise, he dropped one hand and closed the fingers of his other one around mine. Then he intertwined them.
The strength of his grip scared me but not because it was painful.
No, it was because I liked it.
Too much.
I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d touched someone like this.
To comfort, to ease their pain, to let them know they weren’t alone. To take back those same things in return.
We sat like that for a long time, our bodies separated by a few inches, but our hands linked as if they were one. I felt the exact moment Lincoln relaxed, but he didn’t let go of me.
“Sorry,” was all he said as his eyes focused on the crystal-clear stream running over all sizes and shapes of rocks.
I shook my head and tried to say it was no problem, but the words wouldn’t come out. They just seemed too trite. So I squeezed his hand instead.
Several long seconds passed before Lincoln said, “I didn’t really decide on nursing until I got home from the army and discovered that my—”
Lincoln abruptly stopped talking. He shook his head as if reprimanding himself for whatever he’d been about to say. His voice sounded emotionless when he continued.
“When I was working in different hospitals during my training, I saw so many people come through those doors and never leave. But it was the ones who had no one to hold their hand as they took their last breath, no one to tell them they were safe, no one to wipe away their tears, that made the decision for me.”
“How?” I whispered. Lincoln still had a hold of my hand, but I didn’t really notice anymore. “How do you live with that… that pain? That sadness?” I asked because I couldn’t fathom all the things he had seen and heard.
Lincoln closed his other hand around mine, so he was essentially holding my one hand with both of his. He studied me for the longest time. I was glad to see some of the pain was gone from his eyes, but there was sadness there now.
He gave my hand a gentle squeeze before asking me a question that had my blood running cold.
“How do you?”
CHAPTER NINE
LINCOLN
I fully expected him to run. I’d even loosened my grip on his fingers enough that he’d be able to easily pull free of my hold.
Theo was the last person I’d expected to see in the middle of the woods that surrounded most of Cam and Ford’s house. The sun was beginning its slow descent behind the horizon, which would make the path back to the house tricky to navigate if you didn’t know where you were going.
In the few seconds since my question, I’d seen a myriad of emotions cross Theo’s face, and I wondered which one would come out swinging at me. I’d purposefully put some space between myself and the younger man in the past week because the truth was that I didn’t trust myself around him. The nurse in me wanted to check his arm; the man in me wanted to do a lot of things that would have had Theo on the next bus out of town.
So I’d kept myself busy with Walter, and I’d begun extending my walks from fifteen or twenty minutes to an hour, sometimes even more.
Like today.
I’d specifically asked Cam and Ford for the day off which, of course, I’d been granted without hesitation. All the men in the family knew how to help Walter with his stretching exercises, not to mention putting up with his unfiltered mouth.
Cam and Ford had probably assumed I was heading into town or maybe even doing the opposite and getting as far away as possible from Pelican Bay so I could find myself some hot young thing to hook up with. None of the men in the family had outright asked me about my sexuality, and I hadn’t offered to confirm or deny anything. But the young man next to me had to at least suspect by now. Straight men didn’t just go around holding each other’s hands for indiscriminate amounts of time in an effort to offer comfort.