Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For something to go wrong.
Except, it hadn’t.
I was happy.
And I was going off to my big girl job, and I’d do just about anything to assure Bram that I would be okay.
Because he wasn’t playing. He was scared for me. I could read it in the intensity in his eyes.
By the way he looked like he was about to let me go out in the wilds of the world without him at my side.
“I’ll be okay,” I said, moving into him without thought.
That’d been happening a lot, too. Me moving toward him and touching him in some way.
I’d never done that before. Never allowed myself to do it before. Because that was the fastest way to find myself disappointed before—before this newest truce with Bram, which I called the BNB (Before New Bram) Era in my head—to try to touch Bram. Or get any sort of intimacy out of him. It was the fastest way to shut him down. So, at some point in the years that I’d spent being his wife, I’d learned not to touch him.
But now, my touch was almost like some sort of signal to him. A signal like a red flag to a bull. The moment I touched him, he took that as the sign he needed to bring me into his chest. To press his lips against my forehead. To touch me in the ways I’d only ever dreamed about him touching me.
It was, literally, my dream.
And I was living it.
“I promise you,” I said to my husband who was looking at me with his heart. “I’ll be smart. You’ve taught me well over the years.”
And he had.
He’d gone out of his way to make sure that I was always safe. He encouraged me to take protection classes—weapon and physical classes that would cover me in every situation—and I had. Now that I was expecting something to happen, I would be more prepared. I wouldn’t be caught unaware again.
Which I decided Bram knew. That had to be the only reason he allowed me to leave him.
“Just keep aware. Always know what’s going on with your surroundings. I’ll bring you lunch so you won’t have to leave to do that. And please, if you do need to leave, call me. I want to know when you leave, when you get home, and make sure you set the alarm if you get home before me, okay?”
The pleading in his eyes were my undoing.
I couldn’t stop myself from pressing my lips to his jaw, which happened to be the only thing I could reach.
I hated being short. Being short meant that you couldn’t kiss what you wanted on tall people like my husband—such as his lips.
But, realizing that I couldn’t quite reach where I wanted, he bent down and brought his lips to mine.
I sighed, feeling what felt like rightness spread through my veins.
I’d missed the intimacy. Well, the physical part anyway since I had been apart from him so long. The emotional intimacy I don’t think I ever had with Bram.
To be honest, I’d always felt lonely while being with him. What’s the difference if I was lonely while with him, or lonely while I was alone?
At least, before, that’d been my thought process. Now… now I realized that he was feeling much the same as I had been.
Though both of us were too stubborn to say anything.
Each one of us thought that the other didn’t want us… and look where that communication, or lack thereof, had gotten us. We’d gotten nowhere and had nothing but ten years of heartache to show for our marriage.
But now, we were living our fresh start. Our fresh start in our new town, that had a person that’d beat the hell out of me on the loose.
“I’ll call when I get to work.” I paused. “Are you excited?”
Today would be his first day of work, too. A day of work that would eventually take him into the Gulf of Mexico, hours offshore.
Though, not today. Today was just an orientation day for him. A day where he learned what he needed to learn about the company, did what he needed to do when it came to their preliminary hires, and hopefully be home in time for dinner.
“They’ll probably want me there to show them what skills I have on the job. I’m sure I’ll take the morning filling out bullshit paperwork and going through safety meetings. I’m not so excited about today, per se, but next week when I can actually get out there and work? Yeah, I’m excited about that,” he admitted.
Bram hadn’t had the best of underwater welding jobs where we’d been living in Intercourse. But now, with the whole Gulf at his fingertips, there were all kinds of opportunities to be had.