Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
I caught them before they’d gotten in the car.
Both froze, turning startled eyes to me.
I stopped and ordered Bubbles, “If you truly love him, stay away.”
“No offense, woman,” Bubbles started cautiously, “but you haven’t been around for—”
“Shut up,” I interrupted. “You want to figure it out, listen carefully, I’ll tell you where to start. If you honestly love him, no matter how much it hurts, no matter what it costs, you stay away.”
I felt Riggs come up behind me, but knew he was approaching because Bubbles and Lucille looked to him as he did.
Lucille turned back to me. “We won’t be bothering either of you anymore, Nadia.”
“You,” I pushed at Bubbles. “I want to hear it from you.”
Riggs slid an arm around my belly from behind and murmured, “Nadia, come back around with me.”
“Love is not selfish,” I said to Bubbles. “And it certainly isn’t causing pain. It can get complicated and twisted and have to be straightened out, but if it’s true, it’s never selfish. So if you love him, promise right now, unless he calls for you, stay away.”
Bubbles looked from me, to Riggs, to me, to Riggs, back to me for a long spell, then to Riggs for a longer one.
And it was to Riggs, he said, “I’ll stay away.”
“Get in the car, sweetie,” Lucille told him gently.
Bubbles didn’t move. He stared at Riggs.
I didn’t look, but I had a feeling Riggs was staring back.
Finally, with effort, and visible pain, Bubbles folded into the car.
Lucille shot a sad look our way before she got in beside him, started it up, and Riggs and I stood where we were and watched them drive away.
Their taillights were in the distance when suddenly I was up in Riggs’s arms.
I slid one of mine around his shoulders automatically as I asked, “What are you doing?”
“You’re barefoot.”
He carried me to the back porch, and in front of the loveseat, set me down.
He then announced, “I’m making fucking martinis.”
That was when it happened, though for the life of me, I didn’t know why it happened then. I’d journal about it later and settle on the fact that I knew he could take no more.
I also knew I couldn’t be part of anything he had to take, to look after, to worry about.
I further knew, if I had another week with him, or another fifty years, he was a man who’d break his back and sell his soul to look out for me, so I had no real power over saving him from that.
But he was going to get that back from me.
Which was why, with really crappy timing, I asked, “Do you know that the police don’t clean up crime scenes?”
I watched his long body still, before he was on me, his hands cupping my jaw, his face in mine.
“Honey.”
“Before you meet Maribeth, you should know, she was the one who discovered what bioremediation specialists were. And she’s the one who hired them. She’s also the one who paid for it, even if I’m loaded, she’s loaded too. And last, she was the one who went with me before they came, because I had to see. And I saw, baby. I saw everything.”
If his expression had been ravaged before, it was wrecked now.
Totally crappy timing.
He slid his fingers back into my hair, cupping my head, one over the other, and shoved my face in his chest.
My voice was husky and muffled by his tee when I said, “I can’t have you taking anymore. Enough is enough. I don’t want to be the emotional time bomb you’re worried about while you’re forced to deal with everything. So I’ll tell you, I’ve been trying to figure out how to begin to tackle it, but I honestly don’t know how to process the sheer ugliness of it. I’m landing on the fact she fought like a hellcat. And I’m so damned proud that she did. I know it’s not selfish to think this next, it’s just my mom. I’m certain she died not wanting to die. Knowing she had so much more life to live. But she also died before she actually died, knowing what her dying would do to me. And that was part of why she fought so hard to stay alive. It was for her, definitely, but it was also for me. And that means everything to me.”
He let my head go and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, crushing me to him so powerfully, it squished my face into his chest, and I had to turn my cheek to it in order to breathe.
“I think—” I stopped and started again. “I think I don’t need to speak words. To share my pain in order to understand it. I’ll never process it, Riggs. I don’t know him, I never did, I never will, and I’m glad of that. He not only doesn’t bear contemplation, he doesn’t deserve it. I know who he was will mess with me occasionally, but in the end, he’s a nonentity. He doesn’t matter. Mom was right way back then. My real dad died in a plane crash, and what I became was about her and Dedulya. That man had no real part in making me.”