Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
I pouted, which he thought was cute, because he said so.
“You may be cute,” he murmured. “But we’re not going to do anything to jar that head any. It was a really bad concussion, Net.”
He had a point.
Also, if I wanted to get better, I had to follow the rules.
“I hate not having my memory.”
“You and me both, baby.” He paused. “Nettie.”
“You can call me what you usually do,” I pointed out. “Maybe it’ll help jar my memory.”
He nodded once, his jaw clenched.
He took me through a kitchen, and I paused at all the boxes on the counter.
“What’s all this?”
“Stuff you ordered before…”
“Before I had my head bashed in by some unknown man or woman in a snowplow?” I filled in for him.
“Yeah,” he rasped.
“What’s in those boxes?” I wondered.
There were three huge boxes from Amazon on the counter, as well as several smaller ones on top of those.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he admitted. “I have zero control over your relationship with Amazon.”
My lips twitched. “I guess we can find out later…once you give me a tour.”
He walked me through the house, and I stopped in the entryway to the living room. “Wow.”
The fireplace was massive.
As was the TV above the fireplace.
“Why’s it so big?”
He hesitated, then said, “I bought the big one so I could watch you play over the years if I couldn’t make it to your game.”
“Oh,” I said. “Why’d you hesitate to tell me that?”
He laughed then. “I wasn’t so sure I wanted you to know how obsessed with you that I am.”
I reached for his hand and said, “Lead the way, hubby.”
He jolted. Shot me a smile that made my heart melt—along with other things that I wasn’t willing to examine right then—and guided me through the rest of the house.
There were five bedrooms. A formal dining room. An informal dining room. A master bath that was three times the size of the other bedrooms. A bathroom that looked like it stepped right out of a luxury home ad, and a closet that was big enough to accommodate ten people. Not just two.
But it was the fourth bedroom that was closest to the master that had all my attention.
It was a soft, baby pink.
There wasn’t much on the walls yet, but all of the other stuff was there.
A crib. A rocking chair. A changing table. A baby play mat. Several other baby things that looked super fancy, and a pink fluffy circular rug right in the middle.
The wall decorations were laying on that rug with a “hang these up for me already, loser” note taped to the glass.
I giggled.
“I was going to do them.” He paused. “I know that sounds like an excuse, but I swear, I was going to do them. That day of the accident I had plans to come home and hang them up. I’d already built the glider while you slept in that morning.”
He pointed to said glider in the corner.
I squeezed his hand. “What’s her name?”
He cleared his throat. “We’re naming her Margery. After my grams.”
“Oh.” A little niggle of a memory hit me.
An old woman with soft eyes.
But just as fast as it was there, it was gone.
Shit.
“I like it,” I decided. “And the middle?”
“We’re debating,” he admitted. “I like Margery April. You like Margery Mae.”
I snickered. “I have good taste. I still like Margery Mae. It’s cute.”
“It is,” he agreed. “And we’ll probably go with that one. But Margery April has sentimental value to it.”
“Why?”
“April is the month we met. The month that we became officially husband and wife. And the month that I asked you to date me. It’s a damn great month.”
Him and his sentimentality.
“You’re cute,” I said. “What was my argument against it?”
He hesitated.
I poked him.
“It was the month that we lost our first daughter,” he rasped, pain in his voice.
“Oh,” I breathed.
Another memory niggled.
One of pain and fear. Anguish.
Again, gone before I could dig into it fully.
“I think we need to go with Mae,” he admitted. “But that month didn’t only have bad. It had a lot of good.”
If I wasn’t already married to this guy, I’d definitely say he was marriage material.
He was so sweet.
And big, like a teddy bear.
He also gave the best damn hugs.
I bent down and ran my fingers over the writing on the Post-it Note. “We have two more months, right?”
“Less than.” He shrugged.
“Then we have time.”
Twenty-Five
I have to say weird stuff or I’ll die.
—Nettie to Eddy
Nettie
I woke from my nap with a start, my mind latching onto a memory this time and holding on tight.
The dream/memory was of a time when I was much, much younger.
So was Boone.
It was when we’d started dating, I’d decided.
He was in his truck turned toward me. He was holding a plastic bracelet in his hand that he twirled around his fingers. Back and forth. Back and forth.