Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68369 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68369 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
I sucked in a breath and screwed my eyes shut, and something within me cracked.
“Your old man was my hero, Leighton,” he said thickly. “It breaks my heart that you didn’t get to meet each other. He would’ve loved you like crazy.”
That did it. I fucking shattered. I broke into a million pieces, and I squeezed him back as if my life depended on it. I managed to keep the sounds at bay for the most part, but it still mortified me to sob in this stranger’s arms. I mean, he was a stranger, and he wasn’t. He was family…? But it was the first time we’d met, and I’d struggled to express my emotions for most of my life. The past several years, I hadn’t had any emotions at all. Now it was all coming out.
The strangest part was that it had to be the most painless shattering in history. I could feel my heart racing, my chest rising and falling with each breath, elation frazzling my nerves, and my brain going into crisis mode to process everything, but I felt no pain whatsoever. No heavy weight sitting on my chest, no anxiety clawing at me from within, and no fear pulling me under.
Ryan eased back enough to look me in the eye, and he squeezed my shoulder. “This is fuckin’ incredible. Not only do I get a part of my brother back, but I’ll have a new nephew to get to know.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake! I whimpered and wiped at my face. “I’m trying to stop crying.”
“Fuck that,” he said, clearing his throat. “Family reunions always get me. And videos of service members coming home from deployment to their dogs.”
Great, now I was smiling and crying at the same time.
“I can’t wait for you to meet the family.” He sniffled and grinned. “You’re in the middle of your recruit training right now, aren’t you?”
I nodded, still working on the meet-the-family comment. Holy shit, I had family? Were they going to be as accepting as Ryan?
“In other words, I won’t be able to drag you off to Washington at the moment,” he deduced. “That’s fine. You can expect most of them to fly out here instead.”
Oh God.
“I’ve, um…stalked the family a little bit on social,” I confessed. “But you’re kinda private on there.”
He grinned. “We’re the opposite in real life—within the family, at least. You wanna see pictures?”
Yeah, because it wasn’t like I’d been crying enough already.
“Yes, please,” I croaked. “Do you have any photos of Da—um, Jake in your phone?”
His eyes flashed with both amusement and affection. “Dad, not Jake. You had it right the first time.” He pulled out his phone. “I should have some in my family album. My parents’ basement flooded a few years back, and it threatened the existence of precisely one box of random photos, so my wife and sister spent a couple months making digital copies of everything Ma had, including the countless albums inside the house.”
Better safe than sorry.
He positioned himself next to me and went to the album labeled “Family” in his phone, and my stomach fluttered with anticipation and nerves.
“I’ve only seen his official portrait and the grainy photo from the article released after he’d been killed,” I admitted.
“Then you’re in for a look in the mirror, son,” he said. “You have his eyes and his smile. And a bunch of little isms. You did somethin’ earlier when Crew introduced us, and it was so fucking familiar. I think it was your expression when you scratched your forehead—it was just so him. The way you looked.” He shook his head, as if in wonder, and scrolled to the earlier photos. “Oh, here’s one of him and Ethan.”
“The gym owner,” I noted.
“That’s right. He ain’t private on Instagram, that’s for sure.”
I smiled and looked closer at the photo, and then my smile just fell off my face. It’s you, Dad. I swallowed hard. The two brothers stood side by side, and they were grinning and holding up beer bottles. It looked like they were standing on a patio—I could see a wooden deck and a garden in the background. Dad looked to be around twenty or so, and I did see the resemblance. Only, his features were sharper and way more charismatic.
“There should be one of him and Darius after a hockey game,” Ryan murmured. “We used to play every winter as soon as our favorite lake up in the mountains froze. Ma would send us off with warnings and a picnic basket—and Jake would steal some of Pop’s whiskey for our cocoa.”
I rubbed a hand over my mouth and almost got weepy all over again as the picture took over the screen.
“There we go,” he said. “That’s Darius. We were around…fifteen or so here. I think it was the year Jake graduated high school.”