Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70518 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70518 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
My gaze wandered to the wall behind the couch. When I came for Annie’s funeral, photos from their wedding and vacations they’d taken had hung there. I remembered one in particular of them standing in front of a waterfall in Hawaii, looking happy and full of life. Now the wall was empty, which tore me to pieces.
I didn’t know what to do, so I went into the kitchen and started prep work for the beef stew I was making for dinner tonight. After searching the kitchen cabinets, I found the slow cooker in the walk-in pantry on a shelf, its cord neatly wrapped into a bundle.
Annie. She’d been gone for six months, but she was still here in so many ways. I had no right feeling sorry for myself over what had gone down with Nate; my brother was living through a heartbreaking reality that felt like a nightmare.
Kon and I had gotten through all the dishes yesterday, but there was so much cleaning left to do that I’d decided to make dinner in the slow cooker and throw myself into cleaning today.
First order of business—the bathroom I was using. It was coated in dust and had a stale, closed-up smell. It took me almost two hours to clean it from top to bottom, and I was drenched in sweat by the time I finished. Not to mention bored as hell.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” I said to Sawyer, who was snoring on the couch. “Can I use your phone?”
“What?” He squinted at me. “Lucy?”
“Yep. It’s almost noon. Time to get up and moving.”
He groaned. “What have you been doing, running?”
“Cleaning.”
Another groan. “No. I don’t want you coming in here and messing shit up, Luce.”
I laughed, crossing my arms. “You think I messed up the dark rings in the toilet?”
He sat up and rubbed his temple, then fished around in the couch cushions for his phone. When he found it, he took one look at the screen and gave me a confused look.
“What the hell? Nate’s blowing up my phone. He hasn’t called or texted me this much in the whole time you guys have dated. What’s going on with you two?”
My heart raced as he looked at me expectantly. What was going on was too much to condense into a couple of sentences.
“There’s nothing going on,” I said shortly. “I broke it off and he’s not happy about it.”
“Well, why the fuck isn’t he just blowing up your phone? What’s it got to do with me?”
There were so many things I didn’t like about my brother right now. His tone, his attitude, and his beard were at the top of the list.
“I lost my phone on the trip here,” I lied. “And I didn’t tell him where I was going, so he’s probably looking for me.”
Sawyer rubbed his brow. “I don’t…why didn’t you tell him where you were going?”
He got up from the couch and walked into the kitchen, and I followed.
“We broke up,” I reminded him. “Meaning, we’re over and we no longer tell each other where we’re going.”
He opened a kitchen cabinet and grabbed a bottle of Tylenol. Apparently drinking an entire case of beer in a short period of time gave him a headache. Shocker.
“Don’t you work at his insurance office, though?” he asked as he shook a couple of pills into his hand. “Or did you quit?”
“I quit.”
He popped the pills into his mouth and walked over to the sink to get a glass of water. After drinking it, he turned to face me, leaning back against the kitchen counter.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
I looked away. “Not right now. Just trust me that I made the right decision.”
He nodded. “You want me to tell him to back the fuck off?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t want him to know where I am, but he’ll find me eventually, so…I don’t know.”
“Find you?” Sawyer’s brow was furrowed with concern. “Luce, if he comes here looking for you and you don’t want to see him, I’ll send his ass packing.”
Tears flooded my eyes, clouding my vision. Despite everything that was going on with him, Sawyer was still looking out for me like he always had. I was relieved to be here, where I felt safer than I had in a long time.
“I don’t want to see him.”
He took a few steps closer to me, examining my face. “Why are you crying? Did he hurt you? If he put a hand on you, I’m not waiting for him to show up here. I’ll be on the next flight to Spokane.”
I smiled. He didn’t seem to be in any condition to kick ass, but maybe his devil-may-care attitude meant he was in the perfect condition for it.
“I want to leave everything about him behind,” I said. “I just want to be here with you.”