Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 92062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
“Got it.” I watch him over my shoulder, going to the back door and letting him in.
“Good morning,” I hear him tell Whiskey and then hear the sound of him tapping his side. “Go get your grub,” he adds. “I’m going to check the front.” He walks to the front. “Snowplows finally passed,” he announces as he walks into the kitchen, “which means we can finally get out of here.”
I don’t know why it bothers me when he says that, but it does. “Great.” I turn around and hand him his cup of coffee before sitting on the stool I’ve sat in ever since the first morning. “Do you want to make breakfast today?” I ask him and he leans against the counter.
“I could eat.” He shrugs. “What’s your favorite breakfast meal?”
“I don’t really eat breakfast.” I take a sip of my coffee. “I get off at eight a.m., and by the time I get home it’s middle of the morning and I’m exhausted, so I usually just heat up some leftover food from the morning before.” I laugh. “I sometimes grab a breakfast bar.”
“Well, let’s pretend you worked a normal nine-to-five job,” he says. I don’t know why I have this need to get up and go to him and have this conversation with my arms around his waist and my head against his chest.
“Okay, let’s pretend.” I smile at him. “I would probably have some pancakes and scrambled eggs, maybe some breakfast sausage.”
“Done,” he states, walking over to the fridge. “We have everything that we need to make it.”
“I’ll help,” I offer and he shakes his head.
“You made dinner the past two nights.” He looks over his shoulder, grabbing the ingredients. “Let me make you breakfast.”
“I won’t say no to that.” I watch him mix up the pancake batter before putting the breakfast sausage in the little toaster over he has to the side.
“Have you ever thought of working regular daytime hours?” he asks me as he makes the pancakes.
“I did,” I admit to him, “but I felt when I would work during the day, I was missing out on things that happened at home.” He looks at me. “I know it’s crazy. It wasn’t like I could just be here at the drop of a hat.” The feeling of dread hits me like I just hit a brick wall. “But at least I could be in the moment. I would sleep when you guys would sleep so I felt I was semi-involved.”
“Have you thought of maybe, perhaps, that you want to just come back home?” he asks me and I shake my head.
“No,” I say honestly and shrug, “I have a life there.”
“But do you?” he asks me. “Because everything you’ve said to me since you’ve been here is that you miss home. I mean, not in those words, but everything. The way you live your life, it’s like you live there but you want to live here.”
“I can’t just move home,” I declare.
“Why not?” He asks me the question I’ve never been asked. So many people have just said move home, and when I said I couldn’t, they would just drop it. But not Nate. Nate is the one who would always ask me the questions that everyone else was either scared to ask or didn’t care to ask.
“Because,” I answer him and he just laughs.
“Solid answer.” He turns back. “So you have thought of moving back home?”
I’m thinking about what to say to that. “I mean, all the time, but what would I do?”
“You’re a doctor, you can work anywhere,” he points out. “You can even work with your mother or Jack.”
“But then it’s like I’m giving up.” My heart hammers in my chest.
“What the hell are you fucking talking about?” He looks at me as he flips the pancakes. “How is you coming home and working with your mother, you giving up?” He shakes his head. “It’s not like you didn’t go to med school and your mother just gave you a job. You literally are a doctor.”
“Yeah, but it’ll be me taking a handout,” I tell him. “Look at you.”
“What about me?” he questions, putting the pancakes on the plate and doing three more.
“You built a whole fucking vet clinic,” I say, my voice going higher. “No one did that but you.”
“Are you nuts?” He looks at me. “My grandparents left me a shitload of money and so did my parents.” I roll my eyes. “If it wasn’t for them, you think I would be able to have my own clinic?”
“Yes,” I answer wholeheartedly. “You would have still had the clinic, you just would have been in debt for a bit longer.”
He snorts. “I worked sixteen hours a day for four years straight. Took any animal I could. Did house calls. You name it, I did it. The same way you did it. You didn’t just wake up and get the shift you wanted or the department you wanted.” I have this tightness in my chest when I think of all the struggles he had and not knowing or being there for him. The last seven years have been lost to us and it’s half my fault.