Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Hannah’s lip kicked up in a small smile.
She winked at me and walked away, and I closed my eyes again.
“You okay?”
I didn’t answer Baylor aloud. Instead, I squeezed his hands and shut my eyes again.
All was right in my world.
Ish.
If only my pesky ex would stop following me around, making me overthink freakin’ everything and wonder when the next shoe would drop.
Baylor assured me that he wouldn’t stay here forever.
Once he saw that they weren’t going to let me go, then he’d leave.
Only, I didn’t quite believe him.
I should’ve known that Sal would lose his patience.
He always did.
And damn anybody that was caught in the crossfire.
Chapter 26
I’m fairly confident my last words will be ‘are you fucking kidding me?’
-Lark to Baylor
Lark
The problem with life is that it’s never fair.
I wanted life to be fair. I wanted veterans to get the help they needed. They put their lives on the line for our country, and what did they get in return for it?
PTSD and poor medical care. They had to jump through hoops to get that poor medical care. And the moment they were discharged from the military, they were forgotten.
Unless they made themselves impossible to be forgotten.
Baylor didn’t get hurt while on deployment like most of the soldiers currently in the same room with us, but he was a part of them.
I knew that the instant we walked into that room.
My eyes went wide at the people. Men. Women. Young. Old.
There was one young man, he couldn’t be much more than nineteen or twenty, missing both of his legs.
He had on prosthetics and was attached to some harness-like contraption holding him up between two parallel bars which he held onto in a death grip with both hands.
His face was red with exertion, but he had one of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen on a man’s face.
A sound took me away from that smile, and I found a young woman who was missing her left hand, her left foot and most of her hair. Her face was mangled and twisted congruent with burn scars, but the way she was smiling at a young man at her side showed that she was happy despite the disfigurement.
It was then and there I understood why Baylor volunteered there.
They needed him just like he needed them.
I also made a promise to myself that I would come with him on every visit that I could from then on.
“This place is big,” I managed to say.
“Lots of people come in and out of these doors. It needs to be big.”
I agreed.
I’d seen five people come and go in the short amount of time that we’d been standing there.
“What do you do?” I whispered.
“Talk,” he answered. “You want to wait here for me?”
He indicated the chairs next to the door, and I nodded my head. “I can do that.”
He winked at me and walked away, only turning to look back at me twice to make sure I’d followed directions.
I did.
I wouldn’t scare him like that.
My house had burned down on a Friday. It was now Thursday, nearly two weeks later, and I was glued to his side.
I now knew way more about the auto recovery business than I ever wanted to know, and I almost hated the fact that Baylor did that every day.
Just yesterday he’d taken me on a “routine” call. Only his routine call had ended with him wrestling with a fucking alligator in the backseat of a fucking Honda.
Yes, an alligator. In a Honda.
The icing on top of the cake had been the goddamn live chickens in the trunk. Which I assumed were for the alligator.
“You Baylor’s new chick?”
I turned to the man who'd taken a seat beside me. “I am.”
The man was old. He had a hat on that declared him a ‘Vietnam Vet’ and his shirt was crisp and starched. He was wearing slacks, a white shirt, and old man shoes.
His eyes were intent on me.
“I’m glad he finally found him a keeper. And that you brought him back here.”
My brows furrowed. “Back here?”
He nodded. “Haven’t seen him in two years. Since before his accident...hell, maybe even before his last deployment.”
My brows rose. “Everyone greeted him like he was an old friend.”
“Time has no bearing on friendship,” he said. “I haven’t seen my childhood best friend since before the war. We live eight states—two thousand miles—away from each other, but that doesn’t stop him from being my best friend.”
I smiled, a little bit humbled that he’d put me in my place so eloquently.
“I guess you’re right. I never much thought about it.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, him watching me, and me watching the room.
I knew he had something on his mind, so I waited for him to say it.
“You married?”
I blinked and then nodded at the old man. “I am,” I confirmed. “Baylor and I got married a few weeks ago.”