Total pages in book: 178
Estimated words: 170884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 170884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
I kissed him softly, my hand coming up to cup his cheek as I did. And when I pulled back, he leaned back in to peck at my lips. My heart warmed and a smile took me by surprise.
With our son by our side, we held hands the entire journey home.
I closed my eyes and rested back in my seat as we took our first step toward forever.
It was our second week back in the States. Nothing was as I remembered it. We were literally home, in our hometown, and nothing about this place felt familiar. Everything had changed. Everything felt wrong. So when Twitch asked Ethan if he could watch A.J. for the afternoon, my curiosity was piqued.
When I asked where we were going, all Twitch said was, “For a drive.”
It was a long one. The entire way, Twitch silenced my thousand questions, but when we reached our old neighborhood, I found I had no further questions to ask. I watched on through the passenger window as familiarity started to show itself in this unfamiliar place. And when Twitch pulled up to the curb, the two houses in front of us stood there, an everlasting memory shot through my head, and suddenly, I was six again.
“What’s your name?” I asked in my sweet six-year-old voice.
I abruptly found it hard to breathe.
He kicked at a stone. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll forget it once I’m gone.”
Home.
We were home.
Twitch watched me a long while, as my eyes surveyed just how much the houses hadn’t changed. It was so strange. The entire neighborhood had altered, upgraded, except for these two houses. It was as though they were stuck in a time warp.
Stuck waiting for us.
“C’mon,” he uttered softly, and when he stepped out of the car, I leisurely undid my seatbelt and followed.
I swallowed hard as memory after memory assaulted me like bullets. Shot after shot, they penetrated my heart, my soul. And even after this short while, I found I didn’t want to be here anymore. It hurt too much.
“Why are we here?” I asked softly.
“Because,” he said, turning to face our memories. “These houses were cruel to us.”
Yes, they were, and thinking about it made my heart ache.
“These buildings were unkind,” he went on. “And I’m still not okay with what these houses did to a couple of innocent kids.”
Well, shit. My nose began to tingle. “Oh, honey.”
Tell me what to do, my love. Tell me how to make it better. Name it and it will be yours.
My beautiful man.
My survivor.
My knight in scuffed armor.
“These houses set in motion a chain of events that led to us finding each other over and over again, and I’m sorry for how we started out, but, fuck me, I’m grateful to these houses that you’re here with me. Right here. Right now. So...” He licked his lips, turning to face me, and when he cupped my cheeks and placed a gentle kiss to my forehead, I closed my eyes and listened to what he had to say. “What we’re gonna do is knock down these nasty houses. We’re going to watch them go down. Watch every brick and every fuckin’ splinter of these shitholes be knocked to the goddamn ground. See every cruel word and slamming door be blown away to nothing. And where our pasts lay in ruins, we’re going to build a wish.”
Oh, fuck.
My shoulders shook. I was already crying.
The gravity of our situation hit me hard, like a hammer to the heart.
We made it.
We made it.
We were here, together, working on our future. And with every ounce of my being, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d like to live than the bones of where it all began.
Truth was, it didn’t matter where we lived. A house was only a body. And we were the heart. For as long as we were together, nothing could take that away from us.
As he kissed my lips, I cried faintly then sniffled. “Yes.”
Twitch pulled back to look into my eyes. “Okay?
“Okay.” I laughed through my tears.
Moving to stand behind me, he wrapped his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my head. I lifted a hand to his forearm and squeezed. That was when he uttered, “I’ve got plans for this place.”
Oh, Lord. I bet he did.
And just because I could, I threw a spanner in the works.
“I’m pregnant.”
Twitch stilled at my back and I smiled slowly, widely. And when he regained movement in his limbs, his arms tightened around me hard enough to make it hard to breathe. But I didn’t mind.
When he put his mouth to the shell of my ear, and whispered, “Love you,” my world was complete.
And in the midafternoon of a beautiful spring day, we stood at the bones of a memory and made plans for our future.
***
Twitch
My head was a mess. I didn’t know what to do, how to feel. But in all the anarchy of my generally chaotic mind, one thought played on repeat.