Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72669 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72669 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
“I’ll see you at the next game, Masen.”
And for some reason, I knew I’d be there.
And I was.
***
The same thing happened now as I stared in horror at the rain that started to drip slowly from the sky.
I looked at the Jeep, then contemplated just trying to make it home.
But then the sky opened up once again, leaving me no choice but to throw the groceries into the backseat and start putting the soft top on once again.
Like déjà vu, though, Booth showed at the perfect time and started to help me, not saying a word to me as he did.
But this time, he didn’t even smile at me.
He just finished what he was doing and turned to leave.
And I just…snapped.
“I don’t really know how many times I’m going to have to tell you I’m sorry before you believe it!” I screamed. “My sister was bleeding out of her freakin’ eyes! I was scared and missing you. And I reacted badly to you calling to tell me you couldn’t make it home. So kill me. I was an eighteen-year-old girl. Girls overreact.”
I was crying by the time I’d finished that statement.
The earth shifted, thunder boomed, but Booth was silent.
I looked up at the man that’d just officially broken my heart, ripped it out and tore it to pieces right in front of me.
He wasn’t crying like me but he also wasn’t happy, either.
He was looking at me like he’d never seen me before.
“And you never tried. You threw us away,” I finished on a harsh whisper.
And some sort of dam broke, and I had Booth back.
Maybe not forever.
Probably only until I stopped sobbing.
But he was mine.
For a few short minutes, at least, he was mine.
Hard arms wrapped around me as I struggled to get away, but Booth wouldn’t let me go.
He held on tighter, making a cage out of his arms, preventing me from leaving. Or falling.
“Shhh,” he said softly into my hair. “Shhh.”
I didn’t ‘shh.”
In fact, I was pretty loud if the looks I was getting from passerby was any indication.
I don’t know how long we stood there. Minutes. Seconds.
But he never let me go.
Not for long, long moments.
He got me into my Jeep, the passenger side, and walked around to the front.
Then he was in and driving away from the grocery store parking lot without another word while I sat in the seat beside him, soaked and crying.
He took me to his parents’ house again, coming around the car and helping me out.
I trudged after him to the front porch and opened it without using a key.
He gestured me inside as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it on the ground next to our feet.
Then he turned to me.
“I was a dick,” he said. “You asked me to call you. I called right before we were leaving to go out on a mission. So I had to go,” he answered. “Then I nearly died, and I thought maybe it would be better not to come back. Maybe I’d die over there, and I wouldn’t have to leave you behind.”
I sobbed harder.
His arms went back around me.
The cries tore out of my body so hard that my entire frame shook with the force.
Booth absorbed them into himself, burying his face into the back of my neck and holding on for dear life as the last ten years of torment poured out of my body in huge, shuddering, pain-filled sobs.
“I nearly died eight more times on that deployment,” he said softly. “Five of which I actually took a bullet to the body at some point.”
“You stole that away from me,” I whispered.
“I didn’t want you to have it,” he countered just as softly.
I opened my eyes and looked down at the muscled forearm that was wrapped around my upper torso.
There were no tattoos on this part of his body.
I leaned forward and rested my face against his wrist, feeling the pounding of his heart that matched the racing of mine.
“You tore me apart,” I whispered to him.
“I didn’t break you. Don’t you know I was saving you?” He countered, his voice a low rasp that played along my skin like a feather.
“No,” I denied.
“Yes,” he said. “If you’d have been with me, you’d have spent all of your time worrying, wondering if this deployment would’ve been the one that took me away for real. I didn’t live a good life. I risked it, time after time, to get many brothers out of the fire. Off the brink of death,” he said.
I shook my head in denial.
“Booth,” I said, turning around to stare up at his eyes. Those captivating orbs that had the power to grip me by the heart and hold on for dear life. “You’ve had me since you left. I’ve never not been with you. I’ve always been yours. Through these last ten years. Through thick and thin. Through you getting married. I was never not yours.”