Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
So as I stood there, his name hanging like a million arrows frozen in the sky, apologies pouring from her mouth, I braced for the avalanche of pain.
But there was nothing.
No dagger lodged in my heart.
No bile clawing up my throat.
I wasn’t transported to hell at all.
That was until I saw the first tear roll down her cheek. Now that fucking gutted me.
“No,” I whispered, rushing forward to drag her into a hug. “Don’t cry.”
She came willingly, wrapping her arms around my waist, her fingers gripping the back of my shirt. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have brought him up.”
Jesus, how the hell was she apologizing to me?
I cupped my hands around the sides of her neck, and gently tipped her head back. “Gwen, baby. You never have to apologize to me for talking about him. For fuck’s sake, I should be the one apologizing.”
“I know you don’t talk about them. It just kinda slipped out.”
Using my thumbs, I wiped the salty streaks from her cheeks and offered her a sad smile. “No. I don’t talk about them a lot, but that shouldn’t stop you. He was your brother. You didn’t fail him. I did.”
“Don’t say that.” She shifted, shaking my hands off her neck, but it wasn’t for space. She got closer, her breasts pillowing between us as I wrapped my arms around her midsection.
With her whole body flush with mine, everything inside me relaxed, my mind slipping into a peace and security I’d never been able to give her after my deployment. Knowing I’d gone to war with her brother and had to look her in the eye, break her heart, and acknowledge that I was the reason he didn’t make it home was more than I could bear.
Failing my guys was the heaviest burden I could have imagined at that time, but I couldn’t even escape the guilt at home. I’d listened to her cry, night after night, her tears slicing through me like a hurricane of razor blades. Her kindness rather than hatred burned like alcohol dousing my gaping wounds.
So I’d shut down. Unable to escape the past, impossible to function with her in the present.
And still, when she’d think I was sleeping, she’d curl up behind me, taking the comfort I couldn’t provide her. I fucking hated that, in those moments, I found overwhelming comfort too. One I would never deserve. At least not from her.
It got to the point that I’d felt wrong for being as grief stricken. Nutz and I had been thick as thieves, but she’d lost her only sibling. If she wanted to scream his name from the rooftop, she sure as hell shouldn’t be apologizing to me about it.
Nathanial Pierce, AKA Nutz, loved his baby sister and would have kicked my ass up and down the East Coast for making her cry. He had been as protective as big brothers came. I’d feared he was going to rush the altar when Gwen and I had gotten married.
When someone finally managed to unlock the secrets of time travel, that would be the exact day and time I would program into my DeLorean. Gwen in a white sundress, a daisy in her hair. Me in a pair of khaki pants and a white linen shirt I’d found at Goodwill, more love than I knew possible filling my heart. The two of us standing under a makeshift arch I’d built from scraps of two-by-fours covered in flowers from her grandma’s garden. Our immediate families seated in folding chairs in her parents’ backyard, looking on with a mixture of concern and resigned disapproval.
But it was by far the happiest day of my life because it marked the beginning of our life—together—and everything that I naïvely thought would come with it.
My life started that day when I slid my ring on her finger.
And years later, when she dropped that same ring at my feet, my life ended.
The sweet and the sour.
The beginning and the end.
Happiness only truly existed in the space in between.
“Hey,” she whispered, dragging me back to the present. “Maybe that’s enough talking for today.”
I forced a smile, but it couldn’t have looked any more real than it felt. “Yeah.”
“We should go anyway. We’re sitting ducks in here. I bet he has enough pictures to make a special edition flipbook to go with his stupid documentary.”
I swallowed hard to clear my throat. “I’ll reach out to my attorney again and see what we can do to stop him from coming back.”
“All right. Let me just clean up really quick and I’ll drive you home so you don’t have to walk back with him out there.”
“That’d be great.”
My body screamed when she backed away, but in my life, letting Gwen slip from my fingers was a necessary evil, so I had no choice but to let her go.