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)
So Tucker had been around through all the… well, I would normally say “ups and downs,” but it didn’t sound like there were a lot of ups in that relationship. Minus the kids, of course.
I’d once gotten the nerve to ask Ella how she’d gotten pregnant with her younger daughter when things had been so rocky with her and her ex. She said it was a moment of insanity on New Years Eve when she’d been tipsy and lonely, and answered the phone when her husband whom she’d been separated from for almost a year, called full of drunken apologies.
Then, of course, I imagined she’d been desperate for help trying to raise two kids on her own, so she’d let him back into her life.
From the sound of things, they’d been rocky for a long time before Ella finally had enough, got a lawyer, and tried to untangle herself from his web of lies.
Which meant Tucker also got to watch her go through a messy, stressful divorce from a man he knew didn’t deserve her. While he pined.
The thing was, Ella had been single for a while now. She’d even given dating a try here and there. Why hadn’t he made a move if he wanted her?
Why were things with the opposite sex so damn complicated?
Okay.
Maybe I was projecting a bit there.
“She’d be better with someone a lot kinder and sweeter,” I told Tucker, wondering if I were being too obvious or possibly too vague.
“I agree,” he said.
“Someone who likes the simple things in life, like she and her girls do.”
That seemed to get his attention.
“She wouldn’t want me,” Tuck said, shaking his head.
“Why not?”
“I live in my van.”
“By choice.”
“It’s still a van.”
“It’s not like you’d ask her to move into it with you,” I said, shrugging. “She has her own place.”
“It’s… she doesn’t see me that way,” he said, turning to go behind the desk. “So, have the dogs gone out yet?”
Right.
Time to let it go.
Obviously, I was no matchmaker.
Hell, I couldn’t even control my own love life.
“They were all passed out the last time I checked the cameras.”
“Alrighty. I can have my breakfast first them,” he said, producing a glass container with what looked like cold, mushy oats coated in… I don’t know… some kind of black seeds.
Everything he ate was entirely too healthy for me.
“Go on. Go get some sleep. You look dead on your feet.”
“I am,” I admitted, gathering my things, then rousing Samson, and heading out, thinking of my bed until I started fantasizing about Atlas in it with me, then I needed to tamp all that back down and just focus on the road ahead of me.
I went in through the back, giving Samson a second to go potty, then sneaking in the back door, figuring it was the least likely to wake up Atlas.
Only to find him wide awake, sitting in the kitchen, holding a plate of pancakes topped with a white flag that he’d made out of a skewer and cut and taped napkin.
“Oh, right, I’m supposed to wave it,” he said, moving the plate side to side for a second.
“You made me pancakes?” I asked, feeling a ridiculous sting of tears in my eyes.
No one had cooked for me. Not since I moved out of my parent’s house. Definitely never a man.
“Don’t give me too much credit. I bought them, stuck them in the fridge, then heated them up when I saw your lights in the driveway,” he admitted.
He looked like he’d slept. His dark hair was disheveled and his white tee was wrinkly. But it looked like he’d been up for a bit.
Waiting for me?
I didn’t want it to, but my heart squeezed a bit at that possibility.
“I’m starving,” I admitted, dropping down my things, then walking over to take the plate.
“Good. Because I have some likely very soggy hash browns heating up too,” he said. Then, as if to prove his point, the microwave beeped.
“I’ll—“
“Nope,” he cut me off, pushing against the floor to roll in front of me before I could get in his way. “I got it. Sit. Relax,” he demanded as Samson went over to his already-full bowl, and started to chow down. “How was work?” he asked as I put the cover over the puzzle on the table, so we could eat there.
On a normal day, we would have eaten in the living room. But there was only the couch. And I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for us to be sitting that close again.
So the table it was.
“It was… boring,” I admitted. “It’s hard to stay awake when there isn’t anything to do.”
I forced myself to stay in my place and not rush to help Atlas, reminding myself that he wasn’t going to be pissed off to do things for himself. That wasn’t how it was.