Total pages in book: 20
Estimated words: 18070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 90(@200wpm)___ 72(@250wpm)___ 60(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 18070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 90(@200wpm)___ 72(@250wpm)___ 60(@300wpm)
I checked on my son who was out and pulled the covers more firmly around him. She was in the kitchen when I came out and I realized I was hungry.
I hadn’t been able to eat earlier when I’d fed them, but now after sex and the come down from my adrenaline high from being on the outside I was suddenly ravenous.
I stood in the doorway and watched as she gathered the ingredients to make my favorite meal. Spaghetti and meat sauce. She felt my gaze on her and turned to look back at me with a smile.
I moved into the room and wrapped my arms around her from behind, burying my nose in her hair. It felt like old times standing there with her in my arms and the old anger reared its head again.
I’d lost so much. My woman had been made to grow without me. Who knows how different our life together could’ve been had it not been interrupted.
Now that I had my family back where they were meant to be and I was free of the danger of being thrown back in jail, I was free to turn my mind to the other pressing matter in my life.
Who the fuck had set me up? It’s always been hard for me to draw a bead on the culprit for the sheer reason that I didn’t have any enemies that I knew of.
I didn’t know the kid that had been murdered, but I figured there was as good a place to start as any. Maybe if I can learn more about him I can trace that shit backwards and come to some kind of an answer.
For now I sat at the little table in the kitchen and watched my girl do her thing. “We’re gonna go look at houses in a couple days.” She turned from what she was doing to look at me over her shoulder.
“That would be nice. Junior would love that. He loved having a backyard to play in…” She caught herself and looked at me as if expecting me to yell at her for reminding me that she’d had my son living in another man’s house.
I understood then that if I didn’t stop acting like an ass, she wasn’t going to get over her guilt. She had nothing to feel guilty about.
“Come ‘ere.” I held out my hand to her and she took it. I pulled her down on my lap and pushed back away from the table.
“I’m not mad at you for doing what you had to do while I was gone. It’s not like you had much of a choice. No, the one I’m mad at is whoever set me up and took me away from you and my son.”
“Are you sure that someone was behind it?” I nodded my answer and she gazed off as if giving it some thought. She looked nervous as hell because she knew if that shit was true I wouldn’t just let it go.
“But why? Who do we know that would want to do this to us?” I liked that she said us, that she was adding herself into the mix.
Because it was us that had suffered behind this shit, not just me. It was going to take me a while if ever to get over what had happened to my son especially.
I was raised with a father, so I know how important that shit is to a young boy. I wasn’t here to teach him how to ride his first bike, or to show him how to play catch. I’d missed all his first.
He’d been unprotected. A son without a father is easy prey for some. And even though my boys were around, it’s not the same. The guilt and anger of that is going to stay with me for a long time.
Rein it in Kane. The last thing I wanted to do was make her worry when I’d just got back and we were finally together again. So I set about trying to reassure her that I wasn’t going to lose my shit.
“I don’t know that baby, I’m working on it.”
“And then?” I just gave her a look which she still remembered the meaning of. There are just some things I will always protect my woman from.
I never used to let shit worry her. Anything that came close to fucking with her I used to take care of. No darkness was ever allowed to touch her and that shit wasn’t about to change.
I tapped her hip when the onion and garlic she had on the stove started to sizzle. I kept her company while she cooked and pumped her for information.
She brought me up to date on what’s being going on with my family and hers. I learned all about how she’d struggled with motherhood and holding down a job in the beginning.