Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 49669 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 248(@200wpm)___ 199(@250wpm)___ 166(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49669 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 248(@200wpm)___ 199(@250wpm)___ 166(@300wpm)
His poignant words had me silently nodding because that was exactly why we did what we did. Years earlier, King and his brothers of the heart had been like any other family in the world; they’d been living their lives, completely unprepared for what fate had planned for them. One of the brothers, Luca, who shared no blood with King but called him best friend, had lost his son, Gio, to sex traffickers when the boy was only around eight. What had followed had been a hellish search by all the brothers. Thankfully, with the help of a group of like-minded men and women, they’d been able to bring Gio home, but he’d been only one of thousands of kids waiting for their own rescue to come.
“Well said,” I murmured in response to Christopher’s words. “So you wanted to know about what happened after I left the military. After my tour ended, I was a little lost. I knew I could go home to Colorado and join my dad’s business, but I knew it wasn’t something I really wanted. My dad did too.”
As I thought about my father, a stab of pain swept through me. The man had been my biggest champion, and my mother had been right there next to him cheering at the top of her lungs.
“Rush?” Christopher said softly, and then I felt his fingers touching mine. Not entirely believing it was really happening, I looked down to confirm it, and sure enough, his uninjured hand was resting against my own.
I must have been staring too long at our nearly joined hands because Christopher began to pull his hand away, his expression uncertain. At the same time, someone honked their horn at me because the traffic light had turned green. I closed my fingers around Christopher’s as I got the car moving. When he didn’t try and pull away, I linked our fingers.
“I thought they’d be ashamed of me,” I admitted.
“Who? Your parents? For leaving the army?”
I nodded.
“They weren’t,” Christopher said without hesitation. It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t seem to be looking for confirmation. As far as he was concerned, he was just stating a fact.
“How do you know?” I asked in surprise. The young man was an enigma, and I was enjoying peeling back all the layers that made him so much more than what he appeared to be at first glance.
“They raised you into the man you are, Rush. There’s nothing cowardly about doing what was right for you. Being who you are. You loved them very much. That’s obvious from the way you talk about them… from the heart. You had to learn that from somewhere. They were proud of you. I don’t need to have met them to know that.”
I found myself squeezing his fingers just a bit harder. “You’re right. They were very proud of me for following my heart.”
Christopher nodded his head like he’d won a bet. I found myself smiling. “How’s your hand feeling?”
“Starting to feel it now,” he admitted.
“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” I said. I paused and then added, “Soooooo, you never answered my question,” I pointed out.
Christopher looked at me in confusion.
“How did you know I left the army after my first tour?”
When his cheeks reddened, I felt my insides jump, though I had no idea why. Maybe the idea of him thinking about me even once after we’d first met appealed to me.
More than it should.
“Christopher?” I said in mock warning. “Spill.”
CHAPTER SIX
CHRISTOPHER
I couldn’t make sense of how I’d gotten myself into this mess.
Any of it.
First off, to be so stupid as to even let Rush get close enough to me for physical contact to be an issue…that had been off-the-charts stupid.
But then to flounder about like a dying fish and land on the sharpest object in the vicinity simply because the man released me exactly like I’d asked…
And now this.
Damn it. When would my words and my brain agree on things before I said them out loud? Especially around this man?
Okay, well, truth be told, that particular problem seemed to only occur around this man.
And if all that hadn’t been bad enough, to then go and admit the secret I’d been hiding for the last six months of my life…
I knew he was going to ask me about the HIV. I knew I was going to have to beg him not to, just like I was going to have to beg him with everything I was not to tell my family.
My heart began to pound in my chest. Each painful thud was accompanied by a sharp, stabbing pain in my head. I closed my eyes in an attempt to stave off the tornado of emotions that wanted to spill from my throat.
The same ones I’d kept imprisoned from the moment the doctor had sealed my fate with a few simple words that alone meant nothing but together meant everything.