Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
It was like all the characteristics that had given him color and life had bled out of him over the years, and he was slowly wasting away while in plain sight.
I agreed with Audric, though.
At some point, you had to think about your own mental health instead of your significant other’s.
Especially when you’d already planned to leave that significant other.
No amount of hoping and praying could ever bring back who she once was to him.
Moving my spoils to one hand, I headed in Audric’s direction, walking right up to him and poking him in between his shoulder blades.
He jumped a foot, turning around to glare at me.
That glare slid right off his face when he saw who it was doing the poking.
“Dad, I have to go. Sign the papers,” he ordered. “Yeah, love you, too. Bye.”
He slid the phone away from his ear and said, “My mom filed for divorce.”
“I guessed that,” I said softly.
He blew out a relieved breath. “It’s like you knew you being here would help me. I was about to lose my shit on my dad.”
I smiled and offered him the sandwich I’d gotten him. “Maybe eating will make you feel better.”
His eyes warmed, and I studied them for a long moment.
Mesmerizing green.
I’d always thought that his light-green eyes were captivating when he was younger, but now in his adult face, they felt hypnotizing. I’d never seen eyes the color of his.
I hoped that his kids had his eyes.
They’d be to-die-for.
Set in his tanned face, with his crooked nose, and strong, square jaw covered in a light beard…he was everything that I’d always thought he’d be.
“Is it pastrami on rye?” he asked hopefully. “Extra, extra mayo?”
I nodded. “Yep, even though the amount they put on there probably added fifteen hundred calories.”
He shrugged. “I burn it off when it’s hot like this.”
He gestured toward a couple of buckets, and I happily took a seat and opened my sandwich on my knees.
When I had it in place, I bent over awkwardly and pulled out the chips from my purse.
I handed him the abominations—salt and vinegar—and kept the Nacho Cheese Doritos for myself.
We ate in companionable silence until he ruined it by asking, “Not that I’m not happy that you’re here, Cree, but why are you here?”
I grimaced as I swallowed a chip. The pointy edge scratched my throat going all the way down.
Fitting.
Because what I had to tell him would probably piss him off, and that scared me slightly.
“Well,” I took another bite of my sandwich. “I have some issues today, and I wanted to run them by you to see if maybe I’m just fucking crazy or not.”
His stared at me while he took a massive bite of his sandwich, mayo dropping down his fingers and his chin, plopping onto the paper his sandwich had once been wrapped in.
The sound of nail guns, music, and shouting filled the air around us for a few long seconds before I finally decided…fuck it.
I told him everything, ending with, “And now no one will see me because he won’t relinquish me, or whatever that means.”
He put his sandwich down with a deceptive calm, and at first I thought maybe I was overreacting. Maybe I was making something out of nothing.
But then he asked, “Please tell me again, from the very beginning.”
So I did, leaving nothing out.
Not the way I felt in that meeting.
Not the utter relief I felt when he’d interrupted said meeting.
Not the way I felt when I heard that he was stopping me from seeing other therapists in the area.
I gave it all to him, ending with, “Am I overreacting?”
“No,” he said softly, food completely abandoned. “You are not overreacting. Something doesn’t sit right about this. Do you mind if I have Apollo look into it?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Actually, no. I don’t mind you bringing him into it, but I don’t really feel that it’s necessary to have him in this just yet. I think I need to confront the doctor himself and find out why he is acting like this. Then, if we don’t like what he has to say, then we can give him to Apollo.”
“We?” He grinned.
“We.” I smiled.
And wouldn’t you know it, when we arrived just before closing time for the office of Dr. Russel Stoker, he was there to greet us as if he was waiting for us to arrive.
I shivered on the back of Audric’s bike, not liking the way he was looking at us as we pulled up.
“What a fuckin’ weirdo,” Audric said as he patted my thigh and got off the bike.
“Agreed,” I muttered as I got off after him.
It was three hours after our lunch, and an hour before we were supposed to be at his club for dinner, and we were making a quick stop to give Dr. Stoker his notice to cease and desist, and I should’ve been calm.