Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
My stomach sank.
“What do you mean she was jumped outside her place?” I asked carefully. “By who?”
“Whom,” the nurse corrected me. “And as of right now, the man is still at large. Though, not for long, by the looks of you.”
No, not for fuckin’ long at all.
“What happened?” I asked with a deadly calm that denoted control. Control that I certainly did not have.
Dory sat up, and I couldn’t stop myself from helping her into a sitting position.
She hissed when I caught her arm, then pulled away gingerly.
I looked at the bruises on her arm and cursed.
“Dory…” I whispered, sick to my stomach at the bruising.
Both of her wrists had bruises in the shape of hands.
I would fuckin’ murder a motherfucker…
“I don’t know who did it or why,” she admitted. “What I can say is that I’ve been very careful about where I look for a place to stay. And who I’ve been drawing attention from. I…”
She trailed off, and I knew what she needed to say but didn’t.
“Because you’re pregnant,” I finished for her. “You wanted to be safe for the baby.”
The baby.
My baby.
Holy shit, I was going to be a father.
A terrible one, but a father, nonetheless.
Maybe I can be a better father than I’ve been a husband…
CHAPTER 11
I like long, romantic walks through haunted houses.
-Dory to Bram
DORY
I heard the sound of pipes, and I knew that my day was about to go to shit. Or more shit than it’d already turned into.
Why?
Because I knew those pipes.
I’d been hearing them come home to me for ten years.
I dreaded and craved the sound of those pipes for so long that at times, I felt like I’d been doing it forever.
It was a masochistic thing that I did to myself—listen for them.
Because that would mean he was home, even if he wanted nothing to do with me.
I pretended to be asleep when he walked through the doors of my hospital room.
But the sound of his voice had been like a knife straight to my soul.
My eyes popped open, and for a second, at the sight of him, I couldn’t breathe.
God.
In the weeks that I hadn’t seen him, he’d somehow gotten even more beautiful.
How was that even fair at all?
His eyes had deep, dark circles under them, denoting a lack of sleep just like me.
But I wasn’t stupid enough to think that he hadn’t been sleeping because I’d been gone.
No.
Likely, he hadn’t been sleeping because of some other matter. One I’d been trying really hard not to think about.
Cough, cough. Mimi. Cough.
It took him weeks to find me.
I supposed it was the divorce papers coming out of Accident, Florida that caused him to finally find me.
I knew it was a possibility. Slim, but possible.
Still, even though I’d told myself to not be so stupid all the time, I had this lingering hope that he might try to find me.
But never in a million gazillion years would I have suspected he’d actually come.
Maybe he’s hand delivering the divorce papers so he can get it over with faster. I mean, you did see him with Mimi the day before you left. Maybe they want to get married, and he can’t because bigamy is illegal in Texas.
“All of it is mostly bluster,” the nurse, Gary, said. “She should be just fine in a day or two. But I don’t want you to leave her alone, just in case that man decides to come back.”
I could’ve cursed him.
In the long hours I’d spent there by myself today, waiting for the OB to come down and give me an ultrasound to make sure our baby was okay, I’d gotten to know him.
And he knew my entire story—most of it because I was on a little bit of pain meds, and pain meds made me say and do stupid stuff. Like give out my life story to a stranger.
Luckily, I hadn’t spouted out my entire life story.
Just the majority of it.
“I—”
Bram’s phone rang, and he frowned hard at me.
“Answer it,” I urged when it rang three times. “It could be something important.”
It could be Mimi wanting to know where you are.
He placed the phone to his ear and said, “Yeah?”
I watched as emotion after emotion played out over his face. Sadness. Anger. Grief. Then rage.
“What kind of papers again?” he asked, sounding in control, but most definitely not.
I’d seen Bram mad over the years.
His sister’s subsequent capture and imprisonment, for a year, being the one thing that’d set him off the most.
But whatever he was hearing…
Oh, god.
Papers.
Was he just now getting divorce papers?
Those should’ve been delivered two days ago!
“No,” he said. “I haven’t been home to check. They were just sitting in the driveway waiting for me to return?” He closed his eyes and then, “Burn them.”
Burn them.
Certainly he couldn’t be talking about…
Bram hung up the phone, turned off the ringer, then slid the phone into his pocket.