Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
“Talk to me,” I coaxed as we rolled on.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Tell me what you feel.”
She was quiet for three breaths, and then it spilled out of her, easy and unpretty and perfect. “It feels like… like there’s a piece of me that was always missing and now it’s found.” A pause, then she continued, “Like I can hear myself think, but the thoughts aren’t screaming for once.” A beat. “And it feels like I’m accepted by you exactly as I am in this moment and the next.”
My hand left the bar long enough to cover her fingers at my chest again. “You are.”
At the fork, I took the long way, the one that swings past the old feed store and the little church that still rings a bell with a rope.
“Faster,” she requested once, into the wind, into me.
I gave her five more miles an hour and felt her answer with a squeeze at my ribs. When the straight opened up just before Mile Hill, I rolled it more, enough to let the bike breathe. The world tunneled; the headlight pulled the future toward us faster; I could feel her heart go wild and then settle, and it killed me in the best way that I could hear it at all.
“What do you feel?” I asked one last time as we crested the hill closer to town again.
“I feel brave,” she said. And then, so soft I might’ve imagined it if I didn’t feel the way her hands shook when she said it, “And treasured.”
The rest of the ride we let be ride. Nothing to fix, nothing to explain. Just miles. Just us.
When we finally turned back toward her road, the sky had pink threaded through it like somebody bled light into the east. I slowed to a creep before the gate, let the idle thrum us both quiet. She didn’t climb off right away. Neither did I cut the engine.
We sat there in the purpling hush, engine heat rolling up, night giving itself to morning inch by inch. I felt her hands open, then curl, then open again like she was making a decision with her fingers.
I looked at the stone pillars, at the black eye of the camera over the keypad. I looked at the house halfway down the slope with windows that had seen too much and still somehow held. Then I looked at the nothing in front of me, which was really everything.
“What do you feel?” I asked, softer than the idle, almost to myself.
Her mouth brushed the seam of my jacket, the word catching on the leather before it reached my ears. “You.”
I nodded like a vow. “Us.”
The gate buzzed awake on its own this time, like the house had been watching and decided to let its ghosts sleep in. I didn’t roll forward. I just sat with her while it opened, while it closed, while the engine ticked and my heartbeat beat back into her hands and the morning took its time coming around the bend.
We’d move when we moved.
For tonight, we had this ride without going anywhere particular, making any declarations, and it was enough.
Chapter 21
IvaLeigh
I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the rim of my coffee cup like the answers might appear in the dark liquid if I just stared long enough. Mom moved around the kitchen in that quiet, efficient way she had always done, buttering toast and sliding it onto a plate I hadn’t asked for but she knew I needed.
It was late morning, sunlight spilling through the lace curtains, catching dust motes that danced like they didn’t know the world had fallen apart. My father had gone into the study early, phone pressed to his ear, voice pitched low. I hadn’t spoken to him since the dinner where he confessed everything days ago.
Mom set the plate down in front of me and sat across from me with her own cup of tea. She looked tired, but not weak. Tired in the way of someone who had carried too much for too long.
“You’ve been quiet,” she acknowledged gently.
I pushed the toast around the plate. “Just thinking.”
“About him?” she asked, too knowing for me to dodge.
I looked up, startled. She didn’t flinch.
“Mom—”
“I’ve seen the way you look when you think about him,” she shared. “Your eyes light up, even when your world is heavy. I’m your mother. I know.”
Heat crept up my neck. I dropped my gaze to the table. “It’s crazy. We don’t fit.”
She reached across, brushed her fingers over mine. “Honey, love always looks crazy from the outside.”
I swallowed hard, words tangling in my throat. “He’s not like anyone I’ve ever known. He’s rough and hard and sometimes terrifying, but—” I broke off, pressing my palms to my eyes. “But I feel safe with him. Like the kind of safe that isn’t about locked doors or clean streets. It’s about knowing someone would bleed before they let you get hurt.”