Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Johnny’s family was my family now.
They may not be related to me by blood, but they were related to me by heart.
They were mine, and I’d fight for them. I’d kill for them. I’d die for them.
Johnny slung his arm around my shoulder and placed a kiss on my head.
I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.
“We’ll keep it up, Pops,” Johnny promised.
The baby in my belly jumped at the sound of his father’s voice, and I felt my heart swell again.
I knew that Johnny would be everything to this baby—something I’d never had with my own father—and he’d never feel the way I felt. He’d have everything that I didn’t. Love, protection, shelter. Johnny would rather die than ever not give him that.
“You’ll keep what up?” Sebastian asked as he came up to us, Hank on his back.
Hank and Sebastian were as thick as thieves since he’d come into our lives, though he wasn’t in it in the same capacity as we’d once thought he would be.
After Rosie had gone to prison for attempted murder, Sharon had stepped back from working as a lawyer for the state and stepped back into her role as grandmother. Today, she’d come to attend Blaise’s going away party with Hank in tow.
Johnny was the ‘best uncle ever,’ and Sebastian was the ‘best friend’ and a ‘pseudo-papa.’
But, the moment that Sebastian was close enough, Hank went to his uncle Johnny, and Johnny didn’t even hesitate.
Hank was smaller than most kids his age. He had a heart defect that still gave us cause for concern—as was the consensus with his doctors—but over time, he was expected to heal and become a fully functional adult. He was fragile now, but he wouldn’t be forever.
Johnny still treated him like glass. Like he’d crush him in his strong hands if he held on a little too hard.
But he wouldn’t.
After Rosie had done the unthinkable, Sharon had her rights terminated. Never again would Hank have to return to his mother. Never again would he see her—but that was mostly thanks to the twenty-three years she’d be serving in prison after trying to kill me.
Hank was loved. By me. By his Johnny. By his Pops and his papa. And Baylee, ‘Mamaw’ as he liked to call her, was the soothing voice in the middle of a storm sometimes. The kid would never want for love, that was for sure.
Then there was Sharon, his ‘Nonnie.’ His world. His support that he couldn’t live without—just like my grandpa had once been for me.
That’s when a wave of sadness had rolled through me.
My grandpa had passed away peacefully in his sleep about a week after the entire fiasco with Rosie.
I’d been absolutely devastated, and still was.
Yet, day by day, I was slowly getting better.
The day that Johnny and I got married in a small ceremony outside his family home, right near the lake, had been one of the hardest days of my life.
Since I was a little girl, I knew that my grandpa would be the one to walk me down the aisle. Yet he hadn’t been there to fulfill that duty.
What he had done, however, was make sure that I would forever be financially stable.
Meaning he’d given me not only the proceeds of his bank accounts but about half a million dollars and a note to ‘use it and not feel bad about it.’
“Tired, buddy?” Johnny asked when Hank laid his head down on Johnny’s shoulder, interrupting me from my morose thoughts.
“No,” Hank immediately denied.
Johnny snorted. “Did you eat your corn?”
“Of course, he did,” Baylee said as she walked up with Sharon. “I made sure his plate was clean myself before I allowed him to have any cake.”
I leaned forward and stuck my fingers in Hank’s front pockets, unsurprised when I felt something squishy and wet in there.
I poked another finger in there and pulled out a few kernels, showing them to her.
Baylee started to laugh, as did the other men.
I rolled my eyes. “I think I heard something about another certain little boy hiding his food. Maybe you shouldn’t be trusted with kids and their veggies anymore.”
“Well,” Baylee hesitated. “There was this one time that Johnny filled his cheeks like a freakin’ chipmunk and held the veggies there for what must’ve been thirty minutes before we allowed him to have his dessert. When he got the ice cream, he spit the veggies out, surprising us all.”
I sighed. “I’m going to have angina before I’m thirty.”
Sebastian winked at me. “Welcome to the family. Angina for everyone.”
“YO!”
We all turned to see Roland walking up behind us, six men in tow.
That’s when I saw my husband nearly lose it.
Why?
Because all of his friends—his buddies from the military—were all standing in front of him.
I leaned over and took Hank from Johnny’s arms, and then he was swept up in a wave of excitement as all of his friends rushed him.