Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Suddenly, I was thankful that my family had bullied me into getting my own house. Their motivations had been selfish, originally. They were all getting sick of me shipping my clothes, gear, and souvenirs to their houses to have them hold onto them for me, since I didn’t have anywhere else to send them.
Did I still believe that the house was really just a waste of money? Yeah. I only stayed there maybe a week or two a year. Meanwhile, I had to keep the heat on, the water, gas, taxes, all that shit.
But it was convenient that I had it now. And that it was a ranch. Easy to move around in when I was down.
Decision made, I lucked out that medical transport was willing to help me to the hotel, so I could grab my travel documents and phone that the hotel had put in the safe for me, then bring me to the airport.
It was the most miserable I’d ever been, with my pain medicine barely doing anything to ease the screaming in my leg, neck, shoulder, and ribs. My fingers ached, but it was the least of my worries as I finally slid into my first-class seat that would give me more room to stretch out.
It wasn’t the worst flight in the world at just under eleven hours and without any major turbulence, but I’d never been so close to fucking crying in pain as I was by the time I made it to my house.
It wasn’t much to write home about.
A simple ranch-style ‘starter house’ with white siding and a brick façade on the lower section.
It was fall in New Jersey, and the trees had dumped piles of red, orange, and yellow leaves all over the front yard and walkways.
“Man, how you gonna get in there?” the ride share driver asked, looking hesitantly from me to the house.
“Through the garage,” I said.
“Yeah, but how? You can barely move.”
He wasn’t wrong.
With a sigh, I reached for my phone, adding a hefty tip on the app.
“What’s that for?”
“Going into my house and getting me the rolling office chair out of the spare room,” I told him, handing him my keys.
I could scoot. It might actually work even better than a wheelchair would.
“Alright,” he said, shrugging it off before making his way up the front path, unlocking the door with the keys I’d handed him, then letting himself inside.
Not two minutes later, he came back out with my gaming chair, then actually helped me climb out and drop my ass onto it.
“You sure you got this?” he asked, looking toward the house.
“I’ll manage,” I told him, sliding my backpack on my good arm, then scooting toward the garage door.
The front entrance had a step. The garage slid right in after a small bump.
The bump might as well have been a fucking mountain, though. By the time I got myself over it and into the mud room directly inside, I was wet with sweat from the effort.
Pain was exploding through my entire body, blinding me to anything but my end destination.
The couch in the living room.
It would be a halfway point between the kitchen and the bathroom to make life easier.
I could barely breathe and think let alone move once I finally lowered myself onto the couch.
When I reached for the blanket on the back, I didn’t stop to think about where the hell it had come from.
Or the coffee cup on the table in front of me.
Or the plant on the shelf next to the TV.
I just passed the fuck out.
—
Some time later, I woke up to something licking my goddamn face.
And a woman standing there with a frying pan raised, ready to beat me over the head with it.
CHAPTER TWO
AJ
“You’re being a big baby about it,” I told Samson, my Lab/Golden Retriever mix, who was letting out pathetic little whimpers as I sat there behind the front desk at the doggy daycare I worked at, stitching his favorite toy—a stuffed carrot almost as big as he was—back together again. “I did tell you not to bring him today, didn’t I?” I added as I finished the last stitch.
“Uh oh,” Ella, my coworker, said as she walked in from the back, her all-black uniform covered in various shades of dog hair. “Is it surgery time? Who hurt your best friend, buddy?” she asked, walking over to Samson, and giving his head a rub with both hands that had him momentarily forgetting about his baby.
“Dodger wanted to play tug-of-war with it,” I said.
“He’s a beast,” Ella said of the hyperactive Dalmatian to Samson, shaking her head. “Gotta keep your toys at home where they’re safe from now on,” she added as she came behind the desk to fetch a lint roller, trying to get rid of some of the hair before she got into her car.