Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
We sat there in silence, both of us lost in thought.
“I heard Dad talking to you the other day,” she said. “When you asked him about love.”
I felt my stomach leap.
Not because I was upset that she’d heard, but because of what my dad had said.
We’d been talking about why he never remarried at first. Then we’d gone on to him telling me about the ‘one that got away.’ And how he knew, even when he married my mom, that she wasn’t his forever.
I’d asked him how I would know if I found my forever in a person, and he’d gotten really deep, really fast.
When she is the first thing that I think about every single day. How is she? Does she miss me like I miss her? How do I get her to come back? Or, how do I go to her?
Those had been some of my dad’s last words. The next day, he’d been barely able to speak.
One day, when we’d both been drinking after his diagnosis that his cancer was terminal, I’d asked him about love. And how he’d found it with my mom.
He’d then told me everything that had happened in his life, from start to finish, and had opened a beer to hold, even if he hadn’t been able to stomach drinking it.
His final parting shot, however, had been just as deep as his opening statement.
We’d been talking about all-encompassing love and how he’d hoped for the same for me one day.
When I’d told him I hadn’t wanted that kind of love, the kind of love that made you stupid, he’d laughed and handed me his hot beer.
“That’s where they get you. They have you thinking that you have a choice. Love finds you, son. You don’t find love.”
“Have you heard from Carron?” Sienna asked, pulling me out of my morose thoughts.
I grimaced. “No. The last time I spoke with her, she asked if I could give my lasagna recipe to her new husband.”
Sienna’s mouth fell open in surprise. “She what?”
Sometimes, being a professional chef was a great thing. But then there were others, like when your ex-wife calls you to ask for your lasagna recipe to give to the man she cheated on you with.
I hadn’t been a chef my entire life.
In fact, I’d only become that after leaving the military.
I was forty-one years old, and the first ten years after I’d become an official adult in the eyes of the law, I’d dedicated my life to the US military. The Navy, to be specific.
When I’d first gone in, my scores had been extremely high. When my recruiter had asked me where I wanted to go, and I’d told him I wanted to be a cook, he’d been flabbergasted.
He’d informed me that my brain was better served somewhere affluent. Somewhere where I could make a difference.
It’d only been when I got out of the Navy that I finally followed my dream. The Navy had paid for culinary school, and ever since, I’d been cooking and doing what I loved.
Speaking of doing what I loved, my gaze caught on another thing I loved—and loved doing.
A woman.
She was sitting on a park bench.
She was wearing a long, flowy black dress, and her golden curls were in a wild riot being blown around her head.
From here, I could tell that she had a great body, but that was the only thing I could really tell. The tint of the limousine we were inside was too dark, and she was too far away to get a great view of her face.
“We’re here,” Sienna said softly.
I looked out the window on her side, not my own.
I’d been busy studying the bench across the street, the one holding the beautiful woman, and hadn’t paid attention to the fact that we’d arrived at the most dreaded location in the world.
The large garden my dad had funded in memorial of his mother, who absolutely loved her butterfly garden and the bees.
In that garden in the middle of town, it could be seen by all who lived or worked on the main block surrounding the garden.
I hated this place.
Not because I hated gardens, bees, or fucking butterflies.
But because if you were standing in this garden, there were too many places to hide.
I’d been Navy for too long to love being in the middle of anything with too many places to hide.
I’d done four tours of duty in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
There were just too many places that could hide someone who might be willing to harm me or mine.
“Sir,” the attendant said as he opened my door.
I stepped out, then offered my hand to Sienna.
She took it, wrapped her arm around mine, and together we walked into the middle of my own personal hell.
And, low and behold, my mom and Carron were sitting next to each other in the very front pew where only family was supposed to sit.