Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 65948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
No worries in our heads but what we would be eating for dinner.
It was amazing.
EPILOGUE
Sometimes I’d rather shoot you in the eye with a toothpick than hug you.
-Luce during the middle of her labor
LUCE
I’d like to say that my depression got better now that I had Bain in my life, but it didn’t.
It hung on ruthlessly, and at times, I thought it might drag me under completely.
But then, when I was at my lowest, Bain would be there to wrap me up in his arms and hug me until my world felt all right again.
Today had been a bad day.
I now understood why they said that the suicide rate of veterinarians was so high.
Not that I would ever contemplate or ever had contemplated suicide.
But I definitely saw why depression wasn’t a good thing to have when you worked in such a bad field.
We’d lost not one, not two, but four animals today. We’d dealt with quite a few dog owners that were less than stellar and one cat owner that hadn’t had the money to take care of the cat, let alone fix the cat when it was hurt.
Needless to say, after the fourth death, I was more than ready to get home to my husband—finally—and son.
I’d married Bain at the bay park, at sunset, with our closest family and friends in attendance. Oh and our infant son that was only two days old.
I hadn’t cared that I was hefty in the photos.
All I cared about was getting my last name the same as Bain’s—damn me for changing it back after my divorce.
“You okay, baby?” Bain asked the moment I stepped inside.
I walked straight to him, tears in my eyes and said, “No.”
“No?” He sounded worried. “Is everything okay?”
I told him about my day. I also told him that I hadn’t felt good starting it.
He listened patiently, then nuzzled his nose in my neck before saying, “Andy is asleep. But I’ll bet, if you go pick him up, he’ll give you all those baby feels. And you’ll feel better.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Every time my day started out bad—and there were quite a few of them when you were going through so many hormonal changes on top of having depression—I’d pick Andy up, and things would look up instantly.
“No,” I said as I moved even closer in Bain’s arms. “All I need is you.”
And that’s all I needed in that moment in time. Bain’s reassurance, his arms around me and his scent in my lungs.
It was the perfect pick-me-up when I was feeling low.
“Work that bad?” he wondered.
Was it that bad?
I scoffed. “The worst.”
I’d thought that starting a new clinic would be easy.
Boy, was I wrong.
The community fell upon us in a rush when we opened. The problem was, I hadn’t expected that they’d want miracles when they were so few and far between.
“Matilda stayed the night there,” I finally said. “She’s going to keep an eye on the emergency patients. If she needs anything, I’ll be going in. But she says she can hang out there.” I paused. “Plus, if I’m not mistaken, I saw Etienne heading that way on my way home.”
That was a development that I hadn’t quite figured out, but they had their own story to tell.
“Good,” he said as he picked me up and started heading for the bedroom. “Then we can have some fun.”
But Bain, knowing me better than anyone, didn’t take me to the bed and ravish me.
He took me out our bedroom door to our back patio and sat down with me in his lap.
Together, we listened to the waves hitting the shore.
And I sank into his embrace and let the badness of the day roll away with the waves.
“Good news,” he said after a while. “The ex was finally convicted in court today. She’s going to be serving nineteen years.”
That was good news.
I didn’t reply.
Because what was there to say?
He knew how I felt about it all and then some.
Sometimes, I felt like he knew more than even me.
We stayed like that in silence for so long that I started to drift off to sleep.
I didn’t wake up until the next morning when my baby was in the bed next to me, cooing his happy little cries.
“Hey, baby,” I said to Andy.
He smiled his big baby smile at me, then slapped me on the nose.
“Ow,” I whined.
“That’s my boy,” Bain said, mostly naked, as he stepped out of the shower.
I watched him dress. Then grinned when he said, “Let’s go have pancakes.”
That was my happy.
My son.
My husband.
My life, though not perfect, was everything that I wanted it to be.
I was whole.
• • •