Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Like how his hands and fingers had smelled like the softest, hottest parts of her, all wet and needy because of him. That memory brought the tart taste of her sweetness to the forefront of his mind, and Lucas was just fucking with himself, now.
She made him addicted, and barely had to try at all. In fact, not one of the many reckless hook-ups of his early twenties left him semi-hard all morning the way rubbing a nut out on and in Delaney’s hands had that morning.
Intimacy was one thing.
Real connection was another.
The woman currently stirring the soup a good head lower than his own, hit both of those on the mark for Lucas. A human connection he’d never experienced in his life before this moment. On the outside, Delaney was the perfect picture of a baby bird, if there was any comparison. Weak and needing protection. To someone else, they might see him as the protector, but he didn’t. Her petite size and sometimes quiet nature meant nothing for the strength all five-foot-maybe-one of her radiated. A stubborn confidence that probably should have been beaten or taught out of her—considering the people she came from—stained her aura in bright colors.
Can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
Lucas separated Delaney’s hair into three thick chunks that he began to rope back and forth into a braid. The way she went still at what he assumed would be familiar motions for her made him smile down at his slow work.
“It’s been a while since I did this,” he admitted, a quarter of the way down her hair.
Delaney laughed a lovely sound. “Who taught you to braid—any sisters?”
“No sisters. Jacob was the only one after me. Cub Scouts taught me, amongst many things, how to braid rope, tie a knot, start a fire … boy things, my father said. Although, I did braid my mother’s hair once.”
Delaney’s head tipped to the side. “Really?”
It was a tender memory for Lucas, one he didn’t want to delve into because it could only bring pain, but she had been kind enough to share hers with him.
“The plant out west opened around the time my little brother was born,” Lucas started, trying to keep his voice level and the emotion out of it. “So, my father, Ronald, spent the first two years of Jacob’s life across the country, and Penelope, my mother, barely got out of bed for the first six months. She had a nanny for Jacob, but I was a ten-year-old kid who could see that my mother was sad, and so I tried to help her sometimes.”
As foolish as that had been. It wasn’t good for a young mind to be exposed to bouts of drunken stupor and the emotional load adult issues put on the shoulders of a child.
Lucas understood that, now.
He was the personification of parentification.
A companion to a toxic parent who found joy in the misery of others, and was barely tolerated by the other adult in his life—the man who fathered him—on top of being a caregiver for his brother for almost all of his life. Jacob didn’t get much better from their parents, of course, except Lucas refused to feel burdened by the role that was forced upon him when it came to his only sibling. Family had meant something to him.
Even if it didn’t to the people who made it.
Lucas willed himself out of those spiraling thoughts by muttering, “It was also the only attention I could get from her—the five minutes I’d get to bring her something to drink, or when she’d be just drunk enough to let me sit and watch soap operas with her in bed after school … and yeah, once I braided her hair.”
“God,” she breathed under her breath, exasperated in tone, but he couldn’t be sure.
“What?” Lucas asked, amused but wary at the same time, as the braid came to an end with the last couple of inches of her hair.
Delaney put the cover back on the soup pot and turned around to look up at him. “You’re standing here trying to comfort me—ah, don’t,” she said when he opened his mouth to deny that had been his purpose for leaving his seat at the island. “You’re comforting me like there isn’t a reason why we’re standing here in the first damn place. Like you’re not grieving. It doesn’t have to be about me, okay? And you don’t need to bleed your pain out to make me feel better about mine, either.”
He pursed his lips with a shake of his head. “You’re grieving, too. Something different than mine, yes, but that doesn’t change what the grief is. People grieve different things for different reasons, and those same people grieve differently. So what if I’m grieving?” he asked honestly. “You are, too. Both things can be true.”