Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64527 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64527 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
As soon as I said it, I knew it was fucked-up. Her face went pale, and she nodded at me once before turning and heading down the hall to the guest room, slamming the door behind her. I flinched at the sound of it.
Through the rest of the day, she and I didn’t speak much. The only times she made her presence known were when she came out of the room to use the bathroom, and even then, she kept as quiet as possible.
I knew I’d been an asshole, and that I owed her more than that, but I couldn’t get past the fact that she’d completely ignored everything we’d talked about and put herself in danger. And even if she thought I was overreacting and just being a controlling, alarmist ex-cop, the fact remained that I still valued her, and I still wanted her to be safe.
That evening, I went and knocked on the door. “I made dinner.” I’d extended the invitation; now it was up to her to decide whether or not she wanted to take me up on that.
I went back out to the kitchen, serving myself a plate of pasta and going to sit on the couch. I didn’t even look up as I heard her come into the main room and go toward the stove, serving herself a plateful.
I waited for her to come sit down next to me, but she didn’t. When I turned around to look and see where she was, I saw that she was sitting at the counter with her book open in front of her, despite the fact that she wasn’t reading.
I finished eating my own dinner in silence before taking my plate up to the sink, rinsing it, and walking over to stand in front of her. She flipped a page, studiously ignoring me for as long as she could before looking up and finally meeting my eyes.
“You know I don’t think for a second that you decided to leave the house because you were craving some Reese’s.”
“You have yet to see me when I get a craving for chocolate. I assure you that can get deadly.”
She grinned, a hollow, watery approximation of her usual smile, before looking away.
“Why won’t you tell me what made you leave?” I asked, leaning forward and pitching my voice low. She had eaten maybe a single bite of pasta in all the time she’d been sitting up there, not talking to me.
“Why didn’t you ask me, instead of just calling me an idiot?”
“I’m sorry about that, I really am. But how do you think it felt to hear you tear out of the driveway without a warning, after everything that’s been said and done?”
I knew she was thinking of the night before, just like I was, and she blinked and looked away.
“Do you know what I felt when you were gone?” I asked. It was an effort to keep my voice from shaking in my anger and the memory of how much that had hurt. “Do you know what it was like to see you leave?”
She looked back at me, her eyes filling with tears, and this time she didn’t bother to blink them back. I reached over and wiped the tear away.
“Why won’t you tell me?” I asked quietly. “You’ve told me almost everything else. Can’t you trust me with this?”
She pulled away from me, getting down and walking toward the front of the room, near the door as she thrust her hands into her hair.
“Can you trust that I will tell you? I just need to work some of it out on my own, first, the same way you’re still working on telling me that thing that eats away at you every day.”
I felt the blood leave my face, finding it hard to believe that she would compare whatever it was to what I was struggling through.
But she was still giving me the space to work it out on my own. I could do the same for her.
I opened my mouth, prepared to give way and pull her into my arms. I was exhausted by the shit day, and I wanted to hold her as we fell asleep the way I’d gotten used to doing.
Before I could get a word out, the door slammed open, and I had a split second to look over before I heard an all-too-familiar, deafening bang. I ducked as the bullet whizzed past me, rolling behind the island as I heard the granite crack as another few bullets ricocheted off.
I heard Macy scream my name, and I crawled out from around the side of the island, refusing to think of the last time I’d heard gunfire. As I came around the edge of the counter, I felt the heat of the bullet as it whizzed past my head, this time just missing my scalp. Bucky was snarling and barking, trying to get at the gunman. I screamed his name and he came to me, sniffing me all over to make sure I was good. I couldn’t let him get hurt. I told him to stay.