Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
I turned and kissed the palm of his hand with a smile. “Crazy about you, too, Lumberjack.”
***
We pulled up to Sierra after the sun was already up.
“You want me to drop you at the door?” he asked. “They can’t kick you out when you’re being discharged today anyway.”
I smiled. “Nah. I’ll use the ladder for old times’ sake.”
We drove around the back of the building, and Brock pulled up at our usual spot under my window. He killed the engine.
After I gave him his phone back, I made sure he had my actual cell phone number.
“I don’t know how to say goodbye to you,” I whispered.
“So don’t.” He pushed up his shirt sleeve, revealing his wrist, and unhooked a bracelet he always wore. It was a simple silver bar. I’d noticed it a few times before but had never gotten around to asking if it had any significance—one of the many things I’d never get to ask.
“Give me your wrist,” he said.
I held out my hand, and he clasped the bracelet around it.
“My grandparents got together a month before my grandfather went into the military. She was a jewelry maker and made him this. The numbers engraved on the bar are the coordinates to the land you were on today—where I’m building my house. It was their land for fifty years. I want you to have this in case you ever decide to come back. That way you’ll always know where to find me.”
CHAPTER 15
* * *
Brock
Everything sucked this morning.
The skies were gray.
The morning news was depressing.
My eggs were runny.
My coffee couldn’t get hot enough, even though I’d nuked it five times. Now it tasted like mud.
Oak hadn’t done his business when I’d taken him out earlier, so now the rest of the morning would revolve around his damn bowels.
I closed my eyes for a moment. Was it that everything sucked today, or did things just seem worse because I’d had to say goodbye to her earlier this morning?
As I stood in my kitchen and pondered this over my mug of awful coffee, Oak wagged his tail by the door.
“Oh, now you want to go?” I groaned.
I grabbed the leash and took him out for a walk.
“You’d better go this time,” I said as it started to drizzle.
Of course it was raining now, too.
After he freaked out over his own shadow for about five minutes, Oak finally took care of things on the side of the road. I bent to pick it up with my trusty plastic bag. “This is a shitty morning all around, isn’t it?” I told him as I tied a knot in the bag.
After we returned to the house, Oak circled around me in the kitchen, his paws scratching against the tile. Something was still bothering him.
“What? You were just out. What the hell is wrong with you?”
He looked up at me as he tried to catch his breath after the walk.
“You trying to tell me something? You’d better not be judging me for being here and not with her this morning, because I feel bad enough about the way she and I left things.”
He barked at me.
“But seriously, Oak, this is really it? All of these weeks of pent-up frustration, the best sex I’ve ever had, and now it’s just over?”
Oak growled.
“You’re lucky she and I weren’t here last night. You would’ve gotten an eyeful. Or maybe you would’ve liked watching, you old perv. I saw what you did to that stuffed cow.”
Ruff!
“How good was it, you ask?” I shook my head. “I don’t normally brag to humans, but I know my secret is safe with you.” I sighed. “Anyway, Oak, to answer your question, the sex was so effing good that I lost my damn mind and gave her my bracelet. That’s how good. Because the chance to have another night with her means more than a family heirloom, apparently.”
I went to heat up my coffee for the thousandth time.
“It doesn’t seem right that she’s still technically here in town and I’m not spending these last minutes with her.” I stopped the microwave. “I need you to talk me out of going over to Sierra right now. Because I really want to.”
Walking over to the counter, I grabbed a pen and notepad. “Let’s go over the pros and cons. I know you like this kind of analysis.”
Oak plopped down onto the floor, looking a bit bored by my dilemma.
“A big con is that seeing her would only make it harder to say goodbye and prolong the agony.” I wrote goodbyes suck in the con column.
I pointed my pen at him. “A pro would be seeing her one more time. But another con would be that I could do or say something dumb—like suggest we try the long-distance thing, which you and I both know is a bad idea, right?”