Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
I knew that I couldn’t.
Even when I was in peak shape, I couldn’t just slow down and speed up. I had a rhythm, and if that rhythm was interrupted, bad things happened. Such as me not being able to make my legs work anymore.
Most of the people running this race weren’t professionals. So it was understandable how he kept slipping back into first place just as easily as he held himself back.
But still.
Hell, I didn’t even think I could be counted as a professional any longer. Not with being out of the running scene for a year and a half like I’d been.
But Raphael—Rafe as he’d instructed me to call him during one of his many pit stops to speak to me—shouldn’t be able to do that.
Speaking of the devil, I watched as he crossed the finish line from about a half mile away.
We were on a long, downhill street—thank God it wasn’t uphill!—that was the final stretch that led you to the finish line. I could see the runners in front of me, making it one by one across the finish line, as I ran.
The times flashed on the screen, one after the other, as each crossed.
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.
Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen.
Then there was me. Lucky number twenty.
I ran, no longer able to feel my entire right leg, and crossed with a fairly acceptable time.
Then I looked up and found him standing there.
Steel Cross.
Steel ‘Big Papa’ Cross.
My legs started to give out and I would’ve gone down hard, but he was there to scoop me up.
He wrapped his arms around me, and I could do nothing but wrap my arms back around him and hold on for dear life.
The entire four months that we’d spent separated hit me with the force of a battering ram, and I started to cry.
“You’re here,” I keened, burying my face into his neck.
My legs felt like limp, useless noodles as he held me, rocking me back and forth.
But he didn’t let on that he was hurting.
Didn’t act like he was in pain in any way, really.
Then again, I knew that he wasn’t hurting anywhere near as much lately.
The burns on his chest and side had healed. That, I’d found out, from his son. His son that I called and checked in with once a week to see how his father was doing.
“Where else would I be?” he rumbled.
The sound of his voice was like a soothing balm to my very soul. Everything that had been rioting inside of me after the fires at Steel’s house and then at the safe house where Steel was severely burned dissipated.
No longer was I scared. No longer was I weak.
Why? Because Steel was there.
He always would be.
I’d tried to stay away, and now I realized how stupid I had been.
It hadn’t been until this very second, until Steel had reminded me how it felt to be in his arms when we didn’t have doom hanging over our heads, that I realized what we’d been missing. What I’d been missing.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” he rumbled. “We have some things to talk about, but right now, I’m just happy that you’re here and with me. Happy that you finally made it through a race again. Happy that your son just told me eighteen useless facts while we waited for you to cross the finish line. Happy that your daughter was there to wrap her arms around me and tell me all about how her mama had ridden her ass for the last few months.”
I choked on a sob and then squeezed him tighter.
“Did you see your time?” Steel asked a few moments later.
I licked my lips, then looked up to the giant screen that would tell me my time…and then gasped.
“Steel…” I breathed. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” he laughed.
I let go of him and stood on my own two shaky feet, and stared.
“Steel…” I murmured.
When I looked back at him, it was to find him down on one knee.
“Winnie?”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t decide whether I wanted to throw myself into his arms or let him finish with what he had to say.
“Yeah?” I croaked.
“We’ve had some good times, and we’ve had some really bad times,” he started.
I dashed a tear away from my eye.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We have.”
“And, over the last four months, I’ve done a whole lotta thinking.”
“You have?” I asked.
Because I had, too.
I’d already decided I was going to go back. I was going to beg him.
I was going to do anything it took to get him to give me another chance.
He nodded, then pulled out a box that was in the front of his leather jacket.
The one I’d bought him for his birthday a few weeks before a fire that had destroyed everything.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “And I know three things for sure.”
I found myself smiling.
“And what are those?”