Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
What did surprise me though was the graceful older couple standing a little further away from the man.
They didn’t look the type to go into a bar to eat…not with those clothes anyway.
And they really weren’t dressed for a bar.
The woman wore white linen pants, a pale lavender silk shirt, and a scarf around her delicate neck.
She had dirty blonde hair that was styled in long, loose waves down her back.
And although she looked familiar, it was the man at her side that held my attention.
He was tall.
Really tall.
He was older, but not really old.
He had blonde hair with a hint of red in it when he moved, and sharp gray eyes that took in everything around him without actually moving an inch.
He was wearing a similar dressy outfit to the woman at his side, but he was wearing black slacks and a pale lavender button down shirt.
His eyes caught me as I looked at him, and they narrowed, marking my turn to leave with haste.
I couldn’t figure out what it was about that man that had me staring at him so, but I knew it wouldn’t solve anything to keep staring.
And if I didn’t hurry, then Silas would realize I wasn’t in the bathroom anymore and come looking for me.
He felt some sort of responsibility for me, and I hated that.
So, in my haste to get out of there, I didn’t realize that the man I’d been watching was now watching me in turn.
I didn’t see how his face turned down in a frown.
Nor the way he pulled out his wallet and looked at a picture from a long ago time.
Because had I seen that, I wouldn’t have been so surprised just a few days later when Sterling came home.
Chapter 12
Do you ever start crying about something that’s weak, and realize the next day when you get your period that you weren’t a weak ass bitch after all?
-E-Card
Ruthie
My eyes stared blankly at the TV screen.
I was watching the ten o’clock news and thinking about what a shitty day it’d been.
Tips had been shit.
Customers had been even more shit.
At least Silas hadn’t caught on, or it could’ve been even worse.
Any time he caught on, my measly tips suffered even more.
“An Amber Alert has been issued for an eleven month old baby that was stolen from a gas station this morning by the child’s mother, who is thought to be unstable. The child was in his father’s car while he was pumping gas, and while he was busy at the pump, he didn’t realize that his child was being taken from the backseat,” the news anchor droned.
I looked up, seeing a grainy picture of a woman with brown hair taking the young child out of the car while the man looked in the other direction. He never even realized it’d happened. Drove off and left without a second thought.
Something that I was sure every parent wouldn’t think to check.
Then a picture of the child was displayed on the screen, and I smiled sadly at the man and the child.
The man was holding the child against his chest, the boy clutching a plastic dump truck in both hands that was bigger than his body.
They looked happy.
And it broke my heart that this would happen to him.
“Baby Donnie has a distinctive birth mark on the left side of his neck in the shape of a heart. If you see him, alert authorities immediately, but do not approach the woman. She is suspected to be armed and volatile,” the news anchor said animatedly.
I turned off the TV with a flick of my wrist, taking a look around at my now packed up rental house.
The only thing that was left out of the boxes were the sheets on my bed, the clothes I’d be wearing tomorrow, and my TV.
Everything else was packed and ready to go.
I looked down at my phone that was on the couch in front of me and willed it to ring.
It’d been four days now without any contact from Sterling whatsoever.
Not even an ‘I arrived okay.’
Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.
Leaving my phone on my couch in hopes that I wouldn’t check it thirty times before I laid my head down for the night, I walked into the bedroom and flopped down into bed, completely exhausted.
My eyes got heavy, but that still didn’t stop my mind from wandering where I didn’t want it to be.
But it seemed a certain man with green eyes and dirty blonde hair had a way at keeping me on his mind…even in my dreams.
***
Three hours later, I woke up to my last day in my house with it on fire.
Smoke was billowing into my small bedroom, but with my bedroom door, it only had a limited place to come in.
But as I said that, the door slammed open and an imposing figure in a yellow jacket started through the doorway.
Smoke poured through even faster behind the figure, and soon it became harder to breathe.
“Shit,” I said, dropping down onto the floor on my hands and knees.
“Ruthie!” Darth Vader called.
I looked up to see the yellow jacketed man about three inches from my face, and realized that I was disoriented.
“Ruthie!” Darth said again.
I blinked.
“Yes, Darth?” I asked, somewhat delusional from oxygen deprivation.
The yellow-jacketed man moved his mask aside and placed it over my face, allowing me a few blissful mouthfuls of oxygen before he removed the mask again.
“It’s me,” the man said.
It took me a few minutes before I realized just who ‘me’ was, and then I smiled, launching myself at him.
“Zander!” I cried, so happy to see the goofball that I didn’t contemplate what I did next.
I threw myself in his arms, hugging him so tightly around the neck that he choked out a, “you’re okay.”
“Thank you so much for coming for me!” I gasped.
He patted my back and started to crawl.
Inevitably, I ended up on the floor beside him, my hand in his as we crawled together.
I couldn’t see a damn thing with all the smoke, and the moment we made it to what, I guessed, used to be the living room, I was praying that it wouldn’t be much further.