Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
It’s not me. Clearly.
Because I lift up my Henley. My whole closet consists of black jeans and black Henleys, black socks and black boxers, and black boots of different weights and sturdiness. It makes getting dressed easy. Laundry is easy. I’m not the kind of guy who needs a suit. I will never need a suit. I’m already married—ha freaking ha—and they can bury me in this get-up if they have to. Why deviate when black is a great color, one style of jeans is as good as the next, and a Henley is pretty much the softest, most comfortable invention known to shirtkind?
I brush my fingers over the puckered scar on my side. Aspen doesn’t gasp, but she does bite down hard on her bottom lip. Her fingers thrum against the table like she wants to reach out and trace the same path my fingers just took. Her cheeks flush, and I quickly lower my shirt. That was not the reaction I expected. She wasn’t horrified. Instead, she looks…well, whatever it is, I have to look away because my body is reacting to how she looks.
“I was unlucky one night and caught the business end of a knife.” The use of the word knife would imply something small, but it was more the size of a sword. “We were far from any medical base or anything that passed as a hospital. Jace was the one who sterilized me, stitched me up, and bandaged it all together. Without him, I probably would have bled out. It’s hard to close up a wound like that on your own.” I hadn’t passed out, and I still have very distinct memories of holding my torn flesh together while Jace sewed with steady hands.
“Jace received amazing marks in his home economics class. They had to design their own article of clothing and sew it, but he used his mom’s machine. She still has the dress he made her. She wore it a few times because he always got a kick out of it, but now, I’m sure she doesn’t. It’s too special. She wouldn’t want to wreck it,” Aspen says.
“We were taught more than basic first aid.”
“Right, yeah.”
“Although, he had the steadiest hands I’ve ever seen. Doing everything,” I tell her.
“He was a good cook too. Did you know that?”
“He liked to talk about cooking. Desserts, especially. He’d list off these crazy things I’d never even heard of.” Most nights, he did it when we were hungry and aching and cramped from holding our position. Starving but trying to ignore it. It was torture, the way he’d go into detail about that stuff, but no one ever asked him to stop.
“Did you ever jump out of a plane together?” Aspen asks.
“Aspen!” I pick up my fork again. I never let food go to waste. Not because I starved when I was a kid—the boarding schools I went to were strict and lonely, but they always fed us and never applied physical punishments or anything like that—but because it’s just not in my nature. Especially not after years of rudimentary, tasteless food.
“Well?” She wiggles her eyebrows. “Did you?”
“You know we did,” I mutter.
“I don’t know. Jace never said. I can only assume. Did you ever have to fly a plane?”
“No.”
“Did he?” she probes.
“No.”
“How close are all those movies and video games to—”
“This conversation has to be over,” I say levelly, without heat or anger. I’m not trying to be mean or to hurt her.
She accepts that by waving around another chunk of banana on her fork. “Okay, Patrick McDonald. Okay.”
I grind my teeth. I’m way too well trained to rise to anything, but I’ve gone a while without sleep, and I’m so exhausted, whether I want to admit it or not. It’s going to have to happen sooner or later, and it’s going to be more than just a quick nap. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to remember that I’m safe here, or at least relatively safe. The house has security. The neighborhood does too. No one is going to bust down my door with guns in hand. Nothing is going to land on the house and obliterate it.
“Okay, Mrs. McDonald. Okay.”
Aspen’s eyes burst into wide spheres, and she drops her fork. “Not funny,” she grumbles, picking it up quickly. “I might have married you, but I’m keeping my maiden name. Even if I am double tree named.”
God, she’s a good sport. She’s not afraid to smile at me and really mean it. I’m not entirely convinced she’s afraid of anything except me being too hard on myself. She didn’t like what I said last night. She looked like she wanted to prove to me that my soul wasn’t black and dirty. And if it were damned, she’d swim down into the underworld, fish it out, and give it a good long bubble bath before stitching it back into me and paddling me to get my heart going again.