Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 89265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
“What?”
“She said that we were trained to be killing machines, but never taught how to be human again.”
He nodded slowly. “There’s definitely truth to that.”
“She gets me, Mack. I don’t know how or why, but she does. I told her things that I’ve never told anybody. She listened without judgment. And it fucked me up. I don’t want to feel this way.”
“I’m not sure you have a choice, Woods.”
“There’s always a choice. I can’t see her again.”
“Ryan?”
I turned around, and there she was.
My heart plummeted to my heels.
Twenty-Nine
Stella
After Ryan left me by the driveway, I stood there for a few minutes in the drizzle, kind of hoping I’d wake up to find this scene had been a bad dream.
But as the raindrops fell harder and the air cooled, I shivered, knowing I was awake. And alone.
There had been no mistaking Ryan’s brush off. It had been one hundred percent clear to me. Very little eye contact, short responses, practically shoving me aside to get back into his truck … what the hell? What had I done?
Folding my arms over my chest, I hurried back to Grams’s house and up the porch steps. Even though I was chilled and damp, I didn’t feel like going in yet, so I sat on the swing at the far end, listening to the rain drum on the porch roof.
I remembered sitting there with Ryan just two days earlier, how earnest he’d seemed in apologizing for his abrupt mood shift the night before.
I sort of … turn everything off. Shut down.
Is it easy for you?
Yeah. It is.
Is that what he was doing now? Shutting down after opening up so completely last night? After he’d promised me he wouldn’t?
The front door opened, and Emme came out onto the porch, wrapping a sweater tighter around her. “Hey. How was your run?”
“Fine, I guess.”
“What’s wrong?” She came and sat next to me, setting the swing in motion.
“Ryan’s acting weird.”
“Some people can’t talk while they run, Stella.”
“He didn’t run with me. He had some kind of emergency and took off in his truck. I ran alone, and just as I was getting back, I saw the truck pull into the driveway. He bolted into the house and came out a few minutes later in work clothes. Said he had to go to the inn.”
“You think he was lying?”
“It’s not that.” I shook my head. “It was how he treated me. It was like I was invisible. Or worse, like he wished I was invisible. He did not want to see me or talk to me.”
“Are you sure you weren’t imagining it?”
I sighed. “I guess not. I mean, he can be hard to read sometimes. And he did tell me flat out that he’s not good at conversation.”
“There you go. Maybe he’s just having a bad day and doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t take it to heart.” She patted my leg. “Tell you what. Grams is in there moaning about how I don’t know how to bake homemade pies and I’m going to need them to save my marriage. What do you say we spend our last day here making her happy and baking pies? You can take one over to Ryan later, and I’ll have one to bring home to Nate tomorrow.”
“Okay. While they’re in the oven, maybe we can get the rest of those pictures organized and put into albums for her too.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
We rose to our feet and headed in. “So what kind of pie does Grams want to make?” I asked, holding the door open for my sister.
“Bourbon pecan,” she answered.
“Good grief, does the woman make anything without booze in it?”
Emme laughed. “I don’t think so. Maybe that’s the secret to a long life.”
Pulling the door shut behind me, I laughed too. I felt a little better. “I bet you’re right.”
In the end, I was glad to have a day to spend with my sister and grandmother in the kitchen. I knew I’d remember it forever. We felt guilty that Maren was so far away, so we Skyped with her as we rolled out the crust and put together the filling. She asked how things were going for me, and I told her they were going great. I wasn’t going to give in to pessimism yet—and I didn’t want to be the kind of woman who needed constant reassurance that things were fine.
While the pies were in the oven, the three of us sat down and finished putting Grams’s old photos in albums. We marveled at the old black and whites of relatives long gone, we sighed at photos of Grams and Gramps’s wedding, and we giggled at pictures of our mom and her siblings as kids, and then of us—opening Christmas gifts, sitting on the swing out back, grinning toothless smiles at the dining table.