Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“Where we go from here is where we were always meant to go,” he replied forcefully. “I’ve spent the last couple of years wishing you were here. Wishing that I could talk to you, hear your voice. Where we go from here is right back to where we left off. Back to that place where I felt like I could breathe.”
That sounded… too easy.
Which I told him in the next instant.
“That’s too easy,” I pointed out. “She won’t let that happen.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously.
I’d never been afraid of Felix before, but in that moment, I could see a darkness in him that he’d never let me see. And that darkness was absolutely chilling,
I was glad it wasn’t aimed at me.
“She doesn’t get a say in how we live our lives,” he told me, eyes hot. “If she makes a big deal of us, tries to intervene again, then we leave.”
“I’m not leaving. I just got here,” I replied angrily. “Plus, this is where the other half of my life is. Until we’re established… I just can’t leave, Felix. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I can’t leave.”
He moved then, cupping my face so gently that I wanted to cry, and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “When I said leave, I meant that we’d find another hospital in Dallas. There are three other teaching hospitals within a thirty-mile radius that I have connections with. I just bought your dream house, woman. We can’t leave. I have a mortgage that’s slowly bleeding me to death.”
I laughed then, burying my face into his chest.
Then I cried.
I cried for so long that he picked me up and carried me to the couch, where I continued to cry into his chest.
“Shhh,” he breathed, hugging me close. “It’s okay. Breathe.”
“It’s not okay.” I sniffled. “It’s been such a bad few years without you, Felix. I’ve had to deal with learning that my sister killed our dad because he’d been abusing her her entire life. Abusing others. I’ve learned that we’ve been an unknowing part of his disgusting sex trafficking ring. I’ve had half of my sisters nearly die on me. All of this stuff keeps happening, and every time it does, I just wanted to go to you and get a hug. But I couldn’t.”
He dropped his head down to mine and stayed silent.
But I’d felt his utter displeasure with it all. I knew he would beat himself up about this. Felix was just a great guy, and if I’d been honest with myself all this time, I would’ve realized that he never would’ve treated me this way. But I’d just been too hurt to see the other side.
And now we’d lost all this time.
“I’m sorry.” I sniffled indelicately. “I’m a jerk for throwing all of that at you.”
He breathed in deeply, and I could tell that he was trying to regain control.
His words were clipped and disgusted when he said, “I hate myself. I hate that I didn’t realize sooner. I hate that I’m a dumbass who couldn’t think to look at a number and memorize it when it belonged to someone who is the most important thing to me. I’m fucking pissed as hell that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. And most importantly, I hate that we’ve missed all this life living together thing, and I was an unknowing part of that.”
I patted his chest as I said, “We’re both forgiven.”
He chuckled, the sound vibrating my body. “It doesn’t work like that, Poppet.”
“It works like that if I want it to work like that,” I disagreed. “We’re not going to blame each other for this. We’re going to go back to how it was before, blissfully happy with our lives in front of us. You’re going to meet my family and become close with them, because besides you, they’re the best things in my life. We’re going to fix this house up so that you don’t have to spend your every day off working on it, and we’re going to be happy as clams. You, me, and Gee.” I mentally slapped myself in the forehead and jackknifed in his lap to stare into his face. His fallen face. “Gee?”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Gee didn’t make it.”
Tears leaked out of my eyes. “What?”
He swallowed hard. “Apparently, dogs have issues with kidneys when they’re seniors. I must’ve missed the signs or something these last few months. Or maybe Gee was just reading the room and knew that Pops needed me more than he did. But Gee was well on his way to complete kidney failure. And since he was eleven, they suggested that he be put to sleep.”
Tears once again gathered in my eyes, and then I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face into the crook. My favorite place in the world.