Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Nolan rushed to push up the short sleeve of his shirt, flinging his arm overhead and pointing to the birthmark on his arm. “This one right here?”
“Yep. And you told me that your dad called it a love mark because your mommy must have loved you so much.”
“She had to if she left a heart on me.” He said it pragmatically. As if it should be plain and obvious and he’d long ago accepted it.
As if it were simple when I’d never felt anything so complex.
“She did love you very, very much. And she still does.”
A frown scrunched between his eyes as he tipped his head back to peer up at me. “You know her?”
My heart fisted and my throat nearly closed off. “I am her, Nolan. I am your mom.” The words dropped out of me like a plea. “I got lost for a little while and I couldn’t find you, but I finally did. I found you, and I found your dad.”
River and I had decided to try to keep the explanation as simple as possible. Leaving out the sordid details. The pain and the tragedy.
Plus, River wasn’t sure it was safe to tell Nolan he wasn’t his biological father.
Not when we were keeping his identity as Nolan Tayte. Not when we didn’t want to disrupt everything the child had ever known. Not when we could never link ourselves to what had happened to Frederick Winston and his guards.
It was best if it was forever believed that Chastity and Levi Winston had died in that car wreck.
Maybe the day would come when we felt it was in Nolan’s best interest to know, but for now, we were going to raise him as our own.
His little frown deepened. “Where’d you get lost at?”
Anguish twined in my spirit. The years lost. The sorrow I’d sustained. But I knew…I knew with every place I’d run to, I’d been running here.
Toward these two.
Curling my arms around him, I hugged him tight and whispered against the top of his head, “I just got lost looking for you, but I finally found my way.”
“Well, it’s really good you found me because I already loved you like you’re my mommy because I already loved you the most, just like I love my Daddy-O.”
“I love you the most, too. Just like I love your Daddy-O.”
I looked at River then.
River, this storm of a man who was my calm.
My safety.
The sanctuary that had held this child in all his ferocity.
And I knew he would for all his days.
I hugged Nolan for the longest time before he hopped to his feet and tried to drag me to mine. “Well, come on then, Mommy. We should probably go tell the rest of our family the really good news.”
Again, he said it simply.
As if it were rational when I knew I’d been given nothing less than a miracle.
I sniffled over an affected laugh. “I guess we probably should.”
River stood, too, and he enclosed, picking up Nolan and hugging him between us, his massive arm looped around my waist as he pressed a kiss to my temple. “Little Runner…thank you for running to me.”
River
The sound of the tattoo machine whirred in the enclosed space of my station. It was close to eleven at night, and all the lights were cut in the shop other than the bright one that hung low from the ceiling to illuminate the area.
I was working the most gorgeous piece I’d ever done.
I might have been biased, but I didn’t give a fuck.
The tattoo chair had been adjusted so Charleigh could sit straddling it, wrapped around the leather with her cheek rested on the headrest.
I was sitting low on my stool so I could get to her lower back where I was doing the fourth session of her tattoo.
A piece that covered the scars that bastard had carved onto her lower back. Eradicating him the way I’d promised her I would. Covering her in beauty rather than the atrocity he’d intended.
It was a forest scene, an innuendo of Moonlit Ridge, though we’d taken some liberties to make it our own.
Trees rising up around the lake.
But this one…this one had a river running through.
She’d said we were the current that had led her here, and she believed she’d ridden on our energy that had called her to this small town. Hidden in the torrent was the silhouette of a blue puppy…stretched out and riding through the waves.
She flinched when I swept the needle over the ridge of her spine where I was adding a teal blue shading.
Could tell she was trying to hold her breath. Doing her best to ignore the burn that erupted on her skin as I marked her deep. Cutting into the lines and filling it with ink.
She squirmed and whimpered, and fuck me, my dick strained.