Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 51122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
They completed me.
“Dad, you sure didn’t eat much.”
I grimaced, making quick eye contact with Viddy, and quickly looking away again when I saw that I’d garnered more attention than I’d intended.
Viddy shook her head minutely, then said, “He’s excited.”
“Or,” Ford narrowed his eyes, “you could tell us what that look was about, and why you lied just now.”
“I didn’t lie,” Viddy lied.
Years after I’d met her, she was still just as shit of a liar now as she was when we’d first started out.
“You just lied again,” Banner pointed out. “We know your tells, Mom.”
They only knew her tells because they had the same ones.
“We do,” Oakley confirmed. “Now tell us what’s going on. That’s a silly thing to lie about.”
It was.
Kind of.
But it wasn’t something I wanted to bring up on such an important day.
“Leave it,” I ordered, hoping for once that they would follow my directions. “I’m just not hungry.”
Of course they didn’t, though. They were my children after all.
“You’re not hungry,” Perry’s eyebrows drew together. “That’s not normal, Trance.”
Shit. Even Perry was ganging up on me.
“It’s not,” Ash confirmed, really pushing now as she leaned forward and leveled me with her interrogation stare. “Tell us.”
I closed my eyes and felt the helplessness rise up inside of me.
“Your father has cancer,” Viddy said softly, catching my hand. “We’re fighting it, and it’s looking really, really good. But the chemo that he’s on makes him not so hungry.”
ASH & FORD
CHAPTER 6
I’m trying the whole ‘don’t be mean to people and call them fuckers and assholes’ thing. It really sucks. Current company excluded.
-Ash to Ford
ASH
“Cancer.” I shook my head. “What the hell? Why wouldn’t he tell us?”
“Most likely because he didn’t want us worrying like we are right now,” Ford collapsed onto the bed, his eyes unseeing as he stared at the ceiling.
The room we were in was the ‘yellow’ themed room.
The walls were a soft pale yellow, the cabinets a deeper shade. Then there were the curtains, the bedspread, and the pillowcases.
The only thing that wasn’t yellow in the room was the door leading out to the hall.
“Do you think that they rented this place out or something?” Ford asked, trying to change the subject.
“No,” I said. “They had eight kids, and three sets of twins. They probably assigned each kid a number and color.” I moved to the bed, then crawled up his body until I got face to face with him. Once there, I straddled him, then cupped his cheeks. “Are you okay?”
Despite being mad about being pregnant again—not that having babies was a bad thing, but hell, I wanted to go more than a year between them so I could enjoy some freakin’ alcohol again—my husband was hurting.
“Talk to me, baby,” I ordered, squeezing his face until his lips poked out like a fish.
He sighed and closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them again and saying, “I’m scared.”
“Of course, you are,” I said. “Because this is your dad. The man who fixed every wrong thing there ever was in the world. They wouldn’t lie to us about how he’s doing, though. We asked, he said that the cancer wasn’t spreading, and was in fact well under way to being gone. Don’t write him off yet.”
Ford closed his eyes, and I felt my heart lurch in response.
“Baby,” I said softly. “Look at me.”
Ford opened his eyes and the sadness there took my breath away for a few long seconds.
“He’s going to be okay,” I promised. “Trance is big, strong, and healthy. He also has a lot to fight for, doesn’t he?”
Ford swallowed hard, his hand coming up to cup my hip.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Not even an ass grab? Do you not love me anymore?”
Ford moved his hand down and gave me more than an ass grab.
Laughing, I collapsed onto his strong, hard chest and said, “Having this baby terrifies me.”
Which it shouldn’t. But seriously, having another kid like the one I already had…that was terrifying.
“Why?” he asked, sounding worried now, too.
“Because I’m already spread really thin with work and our child. How will I add another to the mix?” I asked.
He cupped my head and wrapped his other arm around my back before saying, “I know we’ll make it, baby.”
I knew we would, too. In fact, that wasn’t really what I was worried about at all.
“What if I don’t love him or her like I love our Jelly Bean?” I asked, using the first name we gave our child when he was still in my womb.
That’s when Ford laughed.
He rolled then pinned me to the bed, his face a mask of happiness as he said, “You’re delusional if you think you won’t love this next one as much as you love Chevy. Trust me when I say, you have a hard time not loving something. Remember that cat you found in the dumpster you insisted we have? You fell in love with it before we’d even made it to the truck.”