Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
That wasn’t fucking healthy at all, but Ben understood Cyrus’s reasoning, having seen firsthand how bad her asthma could be.
“So when I do tell her, don’t be surprised—and don’t judge her—if she just carries on as usual. It’s her way of coping.”
Ben frowned, something niggling at his brain. He was starting to feel a little manipulated here. Cyrus coughed again, this time it wracked his body completely until he was hunched over, and in pain.
Panicked, Ben leaped to his feet and rounded the desk—all thoughts of Lilah, and Cyrus’s possible conniving, fleeing in the face of the man’s very real distress.
“Tell me what you need,” he demanded urgently. Cyrus pointed toward the glass of water on the desk and Ben handed it to him. The old man grabbed it with both hands and chugged down the water.
“I need you to be a rock, Ben,” Cyrus whispered, after catching his breath again. “For me and for Lilah. Can you do that?”
Ben squeezed the old man’s bony shoulder reassuringly, a surge of love and affection swelling in his chest. He would do anything for this man.
“Yes, Cyrus, I can do that.”
Ben woke with a gasp, he gazed into the darkness for a moment and automatically reached across the bed, searching for the small, warm body that had been such a source of solace and comfort to him these last few weeks.
He found her curled up into a tiny ball in the empty space beside him, and tugged her over for a snuggle. She snuffled and snorted as she awoke, and gave his stroking hand a delicate lick, before settling down to sleep again.
His ground rules upon bringing her home was that she “absolutely stay off the bed” … which she’d done like the good girl she is. But by the second day, he hadn’t seen the harm in letting her up for a cuddle; by the fourth, she was taking short naps on the bed while Ben attempted to read—he had a hard time focusing on much since Lilah had left—and by the end of the week, she was sleeping behind him, curled up against his back.
Now, as he cuddled his dog, he continued to stare into the darkness, thinking of Lilah, wondering how she was, if she missed him, or thought about him as often as he thought about her.
It was infuriating, this longing. This need to know what she was doing, where she was, how she was…
Where had it come from? How had it come into being? This was more than just the promise he’d made to Cyrus. He could take care of her even if he was no longer a part of her life.
But he didn’t want that. He wanted so much more than that…
“So, are you ready to talk about whatever the hell’s been going on with you lately?” Rhys asked Ben the following morning when the men were getting changed after a highly competitive tennis match. Ben had won. Only because Ben had desperately needed an outlet for his frustration, grief, and turmoil and he’d taken it out on his hapless friend, mercilessly sending him sprinting to and fro across the tennis court.
“Other than my mentor dying and my wife leaving me you mean?” Ben asked acerbically, as he fastened his watch around his wrist.
“I know how close you were with Cyrus and I understand how hard that must have been for you, but you didn’t want to marry Lilah. I figured her leaving you would have been the best outcome to a bad situation.”
“I made a commitment when I married her,” Ben told his friend. “A commitment I fully intended to honor.”
“A commitment to Lilah or to Cyrus? Because quite frankly, if it was to Cyrus, then you and Lilah are probably both better off out of it, bru.”
Ben stared at his friend for a moment, considering the question.
“To Lilah… of course, to Lilah.”
“Does she know that?” Rhys asked, towel drying his wet hair vigorously.
“What the hell kind of question is that? Of course she knows…” But he didn’t sound very convincing, not even to his own ears. How could she know that? First, he’d inferred it was for business reasons, and then—after Cyrus’s letter—he’d all but admitted that he’d married her to make a dying man happy.
He tried not to wince when he thought about their wedding album which had been delivered to his apartment a few weeks ago. The photographer had also uploaded it to a file sharing website, for them to distribute as they saw fit.
He’d glanced through the album but had stalled only a few pages in, his attention snagged by an image of Lilah in the church, smiling up at him after Cyrus had lifted her veil. That broad, happy grin of hers, amber eyes sparkling—as if she were on the verge of laughing just for the sheer joy of it—nose wrinkled like she was about to share a joke with him. Just so Lilah. A Lilah who had disappeared mere minutes later, and who hadn’t—as far as Ben knew—smiled like that since.