Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Hell, did he even eat yesterday?
Lucas couldn’t remember.
He’d been struggling with other things.
“They said if the family is insisting on writing the piece for Jacob,” his secretary’s last message had said on his phone before he boarded the chopper in Freddy with Delaney. “The Telegraph’s editor can give you until Wednesday night at the latest for it to still make the run on Friday, Lucas. Otherwise, they’ll run a standard notice.”
Christ.
He still had things to do.
Lucas tried not to think about it.
Even if he was running out of time.
Goddammit.
Hadn’t he done so well, too?
His arms ached and protested with the last ten or so shovelfuls of snow that he had left to clear away from the front of the cottage, but he worked through it.
His back hurt like nothing else, as well, but at least the pain gave him something to keep his mind on instead of trying to process the unimaginable pain building there. Even if that same pain had started to bleed into the rest of his nervous system because he could no longer pretend like it didn’t exist.
It was real.
Worst of all?
He couldn’t change a thing.
No one got to rewrite the past.
In his boots and thick ski gloves, the cold had eventually seeped through the fabric to leave his appendages numb and tingly with every shift and movement of his body. The nice thing about physical labor in the winter was that it kept the body warm as long as the person continued moving.
So, he did.
Until he felt every step rattling his spine, and each breath he pulled into his lungs worked to cool his internal temperature down so that he didn’t sweat himself into a fever by the time he did finish the job.
Maybe it was the quiet stillness of the land around him, or the sprinkle of snowflakes dancing down from the sky as he finished shoveling, but he put his guard down. Not a lot. Just enough that the wall, keeping him shielded from the painful new reality he faced, crumbled.
The torrent of memories rushed in.
A happy kid.
His little brother.
The man Jacob could have been—the one his older brother knew he had desperately wanted to be. He’d tried … nobody could ever say that Jacob didn’t at least try.
“Fuck,” Lucas uttered, the harsh cuss following his hard stab of the shovel into the snowbank where it stuck straight up without his help.
Good.
It could stay there, too.
Lucas rubbed his gloved hand against his forehead, willing the thoughts in his mind away, so that he could cling onto the comfortable, safe pretenses in his mind that allowed him to keep it together. He didn’t need to haul any wood from behind the garage when a tinderbox sat on the porch full, and God above knew his back could use the break for the night, but he made the long trek around the back through the snow, anyway.
For something to do.
He had to keep moving.
Or else—
“She sent turkey, potatoes, and some other veggies—cupcakes, too,” Delaney called from the crack she had opened in the front door as Lucas hauled an armload of wood from the back of the garage. “I warmed it up. Come eat.”
Was she still watching him from inside?
Could she feel how he was dying inside?
Lucas didn’t get the chance to ask before Delaney closed the front door, making it clear that she hadn’t warmed the food to suggest he eat. That’s what she expected him to do. He couldn’t imagine sitting down to eat when all he really wanted to do was scream.
Because he hurt.
Life never promised to be fair.
Did it have to be cruel, too?
A crater had formed where his heart should be inside his chest. Cracked open, bleeding, and deep, every breath made him more and more aware of the pain.
Was it finally time?
Lucas stood, frozen, only a few steps away from the cottage with an armful of wood and alone, as he stared at the door and tried to answer that question.
Is it time, Lucas?
The doctor had asked him that question, too. Late Monday evening in a dimly lit hospital room while his brother lay prone in a bed with a tube down his throat and machine keeping his organs working. Nothing worked because Lucas had been too late, and Jacob was already turning blue around the lips by the time his brother pulled him up off the bathroom floor.
The needle that did the job had splintered to pieces under Lucas’ shoes as he tried to keep from slipping in the water falling from an overflowing tub. Never letting go of his little brother while he had desperately dialed 9-1-1.
“I think it is time,” the doctor had said in the end, making Lucas finally listen. Nobody seemed to care that he didn’t want to.
Was it time?
Was it, really?
In the end, it didn’t matter.