Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“I like him for you,” she said, nodding. “He takes charge so you can step back. You’ve had to be the one in control of everything for so long. It’s nice for you to get to be taken care of for a change.”
“I like Liam for you too,” I said. “You know… whenever you’re ready for that.”
“Oh, God. Liam. I need to apologize to him.”
“Think he wants to apologize to you,” Salvatore said as he walked up, pulling open the passenger door and folded up the front seat, so she could climb in the back.
“What? Why? I got him beat up.”
“Because he wanted to be the guy who saved the girl, and he couldn’t be,” Salvatore explained as he pushed the seat back into place and waited for me to slip inside.
“I like that he tried,” Wren said as the car started up. “But I kind of like that he’s not a big, burly, strong, fighter guy. I like how calm and soft he is.”
I liked that for her too.
After so many years with someone so angry and hard.
“Oh!” I said a few minutes later, looking over at Salvatore. “Anthony. Is he okay? He wasn’t at the diner.”
“He got into a hit-and-run,” Salvatore explained.
“Oh no,” Wren said, worried about a guy she’d never even met, as was her nature.
“Is he okay?”
“Broke his leg, I think. Some bumps and bruises. But mostly just pissed at himself that he wasn’t there for you.”
“It sounds like I can make it up to him by waiting on him while he heals,” I said, smiling. “I have a feeling it is something I am going to be doing for him often.”
That poor, unlucky kid.
“Yeah. We need to get a place with a guest room,” Salvatore decided, his free hand grabbing my thigh, and giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Someplace for him to crash that isn’t in the middle of fucking everything.”
“A place with actual dinnerware,” I said. “And curtains. Maybe some, and I know this is a radical concept, carpets,” I said, smiling when his fingers tickled my thigh.
“Anything you want, babe. Anything you want.”
Salvatore - 4 months
“What is that?” Whitney asked, coming in the door from school with her arms loaded down with papers she would likely spend the night grading with her legs draped over mine as we both absentmindedly watched something on TV.
“What’s what?”
“The thing on the robot vacuum,” she clarified.
Yeah.
We now had a robot vacuum in our apartment.
Because, apparently, I was “worse than a toddler” with how many crumbs I dropped all around.
“Oh, fucking Anthony decided to attach my ankle monitor to it,” I said, smirking as she let out a little laugh.
“Did he finally head out then?” she asked.
“He wouldn’t have stayed so long if you didn’t treat his baby cut like someone sliced his fucking arm off,” I reminded her.
“I think someone got a lock of his hair and is casting spells on him or something,” Whitney joked, shaking her head. “I’ve never met anyone as unlucky as him.”
Shot, stabbed, shot, hit-and-run, then I shit you not, a random bar fight going on around him had him getting his arm all sliced up with a broken beer bottle, even though he wasn’t involved.
“He needs to be bubble-wrapped or something,” she added, coming over to the couch and dropping down at my feet before turning and leaning back until her whole back was against my whole front.
“How’d it go?” I asked, hands rubbing her temples.
“I got a kid to pick up a classic a few days ago. He came back today after class to tell me he really liked it and to recommend another.”
“Another successful convert,” I said, knowing how much she loved it when one of her kids started to read for pleasure, not just because they had to.
“If I can get just one each school year, I am a happy woman. I got a text from Wren, asking if we wanted to meet her and Liam for dinner. Liam knows a spot,” she said.
“He always does,” I agreed. “Sounds good. I don’t have any plans.”
I did, actually.
I was planning on bringing her over to the new condo I’d just bought.
Then maybe get down on a knee inside of it.
Give her a ring.
The whole shebang.
But there would be time for that.
There was no rush.
“I think he’s going to propose to her,” Whitney said.
“Yeah? What makes you think that?”
“Because he was roundabout asking about her ring size, saying she saw something in a antique shop she liked and he was going to get it for her for her birthday,”she said.
“That’s suspicious?” I asked.
“Well, seeing as her birthday was last week, yeah, kinda. Also, Wren told me this was the place they’d had their first meal at. So it just all seems to line up.”
I was happy for Wren.
From the sound of things, she’d damn sure earned her own happily ever after.