Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
My mind blanked.
“I don’t want you to be Alexa,” I said. “I want you to be you.”
She laughed humorlessly.
“Whatever,” she said. “That woman will always be a problem for me, and that’s exactly how she wants it. But for some reason, you can’t, or won’t, see it. I would have given anything to have gotten that unconditional adoration from you that you give her. But I didn’t, and I know now that she played an instrumental part in the end of our relationship. There is no way I can compete with her; don’t you see? And I don’t want to.”
Alexa was a problem.
I could see that now.
Something had to be done, and I either needed to give her up or find a way that she was a part of my life, but she also isn’t shoved into July’s face around every turn.
Knowing I wouldn’t get through to her today without having that answer, I decided to broach another topic. Let her know what I saw. Something she refused to see.
"Do you know what a slip knot is?" I asked her, reaching forward and taking down the apron that hung next to the prep station.
Her eyes fluttered up to mine.
"No," she said softly, confusion clouding her features. "What's so special about it?"
I smiled, looked into her eyes, and then demonstrated the knot by tying the string attached to the apron around her hand.
“It’s a reliable knot; it works really well when you need it to hold things in place. But it is also designed to let things go when you don’t need to hold onto them anymore." I demonstrated it by pulling the end of the cord, and the piece around her hand loosened.
“Ok,” she said softly. "But why are you showing this to me?"
I stood up, pocketed my phone, and walked to the door.
“This is what our relationship was like,” I said. “You kept a loose hold on me, ready to let go the second you thought things were going south in our relationship. You give yourself an escape route just in case things go badly like you expect them to," I continued. "You sabotage yourself, and when you lose everything, you wonder why."
With that, I walked out the door, closing it so softly behind me that I barely heard it latch. I might as well have slammed it. The punctuation of that door closing resembled more of a shot to the heart.
Chapter 11
‘Fuck that shit’ is a perfectly acceptable replacement for the word ‘no.’ Unless you’re with a patient. Then you’re likely going to get written up.
-Dean to Tai
Dean
By the middle of the next week, I was more certain than I’d ever been that I needed to do something.
What, though, I didn’t know, but I knew I needed to do something.
I was thinking that something should start with July’s brother.
After the diner incident, I’d gone straight to the project house and started working—inside, seeing as it was still raining. It was as if we were in Seattle instead of Kilgore, Texas with as much rain as we were getting.
After exhausting myself, I’d arrived at my place to find my spare key I’d given to July the day she’d gotten out of the hospital on the kitchen counter, and all of her belongings long gone.
She’d even cleaned up after herself as well.
The place where the ugly cat’s litter box had rested was cleaned, spic and span. The things I’d had to move in order to make room for it had been replaced, and my living room had even been vacuumed.
Now here I was, counting down the minutes until my shift ended, praying I wouldn’t catch a call and be expected to stay any longer than I had to.
I had shit to do. Shit that I’d come to believe that I had to follow through with or the wound July had dealt me would fester.
I knew she still loved me. I still loved her. There was nowhere else I’d rather be than with her.
This last year had been torture.
I’d see her, and my whole fucking body would come alive.
A man that was over a woman didn’t find it hard to breathe when she walked into the room. Nor did they find it even harder to breathe when they walked away.
No.
I wasn’t over July.
The house fire I’d worked last night had convinced me that whatever I did, I had to do it now.
Life wasn’t promised.
“You okay?” Tai asked, dropping down into the seat beside me.
I looked over at him, saw the same soot and sweat stained clothes on him that were currently covering my tired body as well, and smiled.
Or tried to at least.
“Head hurts,” I coughed at the end of that statement.
The black sooty substance tasted like ass, and I wiped it off on my uniform pants, a smile taking my face back over at the thought of dropping these off at the cleaners’ tomorrow afternoon.