Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 100604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
My dad was much the same, except he wasn’t crying. From time to time a murderous rage came into his eyes. His hands curled into fists, and the veins bulged out in his neck. Then he’d refill his glass with whiskey.
After a month, Sia and Jake offered to help pack up my apartment. Of course I would want to move, and of course they understood why I wouldn’t want to come back, to face the place where I’d fallen in love with Cole. They understood. They were more than willing to help me move on with my life, but the only problem…every time I tried to think of that, I couldn’t. My brain would shut down. The words to answer Sia never came out of my throat, and when we talked on the phone, it was always about my parents, about me being back home, or about her life. She told me about her job, how the Gala was doing great, and how her relationship with Jake was going as well.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to help me move on. I tried. I did. I attempted to force the words out of my throat. But they never came, and every time after I hung up the phone with her, I was flooded with other memories instead. They weren’t the ones I needed to remember, but they were torturous in their own right.
I’d remember the first time in Gianni’s, when Cole walked in with his friends. I remembered how I woke up, like I’d been asleep for the last year.
I’d remember seeing him in the elevator, holding Carl up. My body burned as it had then. I felt it all over again, how much I’d wanted Cole, even then.
The sight of him on that running track, how my stomach had gotten butterflies and my palms were sweaty, like I had a schoolgirl crush on him.
Then I’d remember the table at our first dinner together, how we didn’t order and went back to my place—the feel of his lips, the way he held me, the way he carried me. The way he made me groan, as I raked my fingers through his hair. The feel of him inside me.
The feel of him all the other times, too.
And I always asked myself the worst question, the one that plagued me:
Did he miss me like I missed him—utterly and completely?
Three months later
“Addison, can you clean out Taffy’s stall?”
“Who was that?” Sia asked over the phone.
I tucked my phone more securely between my shoulder and neck, gave Kirk the thumbs-up, and began heading to the opposite end of the barn. Horses looked up in every stall as I passed by.
“That was the guy I’m helping,” I told her. “My mom got tired of me moping around the house. When the barn manager for our county fair mentioned he was looking for volunteers, guess who she suggested?”
“She didn’t.”
“She did.”
I stopped halfway to Taffy’s stall. My bags were stashed next to the food bins. I grabbed some of the apples I’d brought and kept going. When it came to the alpha mare, I’d learned bribes went a long way.
“It’s been fine for the most part, and honestly, it really does get me out of the house.”
Sia made a noncommittal Mmmmm sound as Taffy stuck her head over the stall door. She had large doe eyes and a long white blaze down the middle of her brown face. Her nostrils flared as she smelled the apples, and she nuzzled against my hand.
“Besides, some of these horses have better attitudes than humans,” I told her. “Like this one.” I ran my free hand up the front of Taffy’s face, all the way to her forelock. “Oh, yes. You, Miss Taffy. You’re a bossy mare, aren’t you?”
“Are you flirting with that horse?” Sia asked.
I laughed and grabbed the phone, switching it to my other ear. Taffy picked up the apples and pulled her head back, content to let them drop in her stall so she could eat them.
I leaned against the stall door. “I am, and I don’t care.”
Sia laughed, then was quiet a moment. “You’re not coming back, are you?”
“What?”
“You sound happy. Or, well, you’ve been sounding happier the last few times on the phone. You’re not coming back, are you?”
I could hear her disappointment. “Uh…” What did I say? My stuff was still there. Waiting. Gathering dust. Sitting alone. “I don’t know, Sia. I really don’t.”
“I still had hope since you keep turning us down, but now I can hear it in your voice. You can tell me. You’re really not coming back.”
I looked at the ground, holding my phone so tightly. My throat swelled. “Uh…”
“Never mind. I didn’t say that to make you feel bad. I’m sorry. I just—I’m going nuts not having my best friend here.”