Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
I looked down at my food and groaned.
A burger.
It’d been months since I’d had a burger to eat.
Honestly, it’d probably been longer than that, because I could trace my food consumption down to specific times and places.
I loved food, which sucked when you were poor as hell.
If it wasn’t ramen, I ate what was on sale that week from the grocery store.
Certainly, they never put anything super good on sale to the point where I could afford it, and if they did, it was gone in moments.
On the day I’d last had a burger, I could specifically remember it because Chevy had been the one to provide food for everyone.
It’d been Dru’s birthday, and he’d gone out of his way to provide lunch for everyone that was on shift that day.
I’d been intending to eat a salad for lunch, and had fully expected to get a wilty one from the lunchroom when a full catering order of burgers and fries from a popular burger joint down the street had arrived.
There’d been so much food that I’d even had two orders of fries.
It’d been one of the happiest days of my life.
Which was pretty damn sad that I called it one of my happiest days because I was given a burger and two orders of fries for free.
I took a large bite of the burger and realized that this day was a pretty good one, too.
I’d fully expected my birthday to suck because not only did I have to work, but Silver was out of town.
Usually, we ate our ramen together and celebrated by eating whatever pastry was on super sale from the grocery store. You know the kind. The ones that they have to pull off the shelves and throw away if they get too much older.
They weren’t the best of the best, but they were still decent enough that we could say we’d had something special.
But today, Silver was out of town with her family for a week in Broken Bow, Oklahoma.
It sounded pretty sweet, and I was happy for Silver, but that left me all alone with no one to celebrate with.
Though, a hamburger and cake sounded like a win to me.
I smiled as I started to dig into the hamburger.
I didn’t glance up from my food once, too busy eating and enjoying to watch what was going on around me.
I’d just finished my last bite of cake when another piece was slid in front of me.
I blinked and looked up, finding Chevy with his niece in one hand and his fingers pushing the cake toward me.
“I don’t like chocolate cake,” he said when he saw my questioning look. “And this one’s not allowed to have it yet, according to her awful mother.”
“I heard that!” the ‘awful’ mother in question called from her spot at the table.
Chevy grinned and shrugged as if he couldn’t care less what she’d heard.
“I can’t feed her in front of Milena, so we’re going to pretend like she doesn’t get sweets anytime she’s with me. So you get my cake today.” He lowered his voice so that only I could hear.
Elation poured through me.
Another piece of cake!
Yes!
“Best birthday ever,” I said as I reached for the cake.
His eyebrows rose. “It’s your birthday?”
I knew that my face was flaming when I said, “Yep.”
“Why didn’t anyone know?” he asked, frowning.
I shrugged. “No one asked when it was, so why would I just give that information out?”
He didn’t like that answer, either.
“Hmm,” he said.
“All right, my darling child.” Milena walked up to the frowning man in front of me. “You ready to give her up?”
“I’ll walk her down to the car,” he said. “I have a little bit more time.”
I waited until they walked away before going up to the counter and asking Manuella for a box.
She gladly gave me one and gave me a conspiratorial smile before she went back to work.
Gosh, I loved her!
My day went about as good as could be expected for someone that was having to work on their birthday.
I never saw Chevy again that day, though, which sucked.
Sometime in between me heading to a patient room and him coming back, an emergent case had appeared, and he’d had to go into a spinal surgery with the head of ortho.
I spent the rest of the day looking out for him, but came up empty.
Sadly, my luck didn’t hold out, because I had to jump start my stupid car by pushing it down the hill again.
When I got home, my air conditioner was also not working.
When I sent a message to the super, he told me he was out of town and the soonest that he’d be able to get to it was the following morning.
Needless to say, by the time I’d collapsed into bed that night with my chocolate cake, I was in a whole lot worse of a mood.