Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
There had been so many times when he’d been in prison that I’d questioned who I was. I felt weak and stupid for faithfully waiting on a man who had pushed me away. And sometimes, as I grew older, I questioned who I was as a woman for ravenously holding on to the dreams of a sixteen-year-old girl. But as I lay awake one night, tracing my fingers over the dark lines of that Valkyrie’s armor, bits and pieces of me healed from knowing that, in his eyes, I’d always been a warrior.
After that, I’d learned to love his tattoos. They felt like sneak peeks into how he viewed the world. This was probably for the best, because hunting down tattoo shops everywhere we traveled had become something of an obsession for Ramsey.
It worked out. My obsession was watching him smile.
“Where could he be?” I whined as I hung up the phone, still no sign of my dad. “Misty said he and Nora left a half hour ago. It’s only a twelve-minute drive to the airport from their house.”
“Relax. They probably stopped for gas or to grab some coffee. He’s eighteen minutes late. That’s hardly reason to send out the bloodhounds.” He curled me into his side and pressed a kiss to the top of my head.
All concern for my father’s safety was momentarily forgotten as the wind shifted and I got slapped in the face with a stench that would haunt my dreams forever.
“Oh, God, not again,” I groaned.
“What?”
I leaned forward, sniffing the butt of the baby strapped to his chest—because seriously, mom life was glamorous.
“Your son,” was all I had to say.
“Shit,” he breathed, speaking both figurative and literally.
The morning sun was peeking over the Georgia horizon, but my lids were heavy. It had been a long night, I felt like crap, and my patience was waning. Ramsey and I were skilled travelers. Together, we’d faced it all. Overnight flights squished in the middle seat rows apart. Exhausting layovers in miniscule airports without so much as a coffee shop. Delays. Cancellations. Spending hours on a runway just to be taken back to the gate.
But nothing, and I mean nothing, had prepared me for a flight from Seattle to Georgia with a seven-month-old.
We’d thought the red-eye would be best.
We’d thought he would sleep the whole way if we left in the middle of the night.
We’d thought leaving our house with four suitcases, a carseat, a travel crib, and a giant carry-on bag filled to the brim with diapers and formula was a solid plan.
We’d. Been. Wrong.
Apparently, Joseph James Stewart had a nervous travel tummy—or his father’s sense of humor. One of the two.
The day I’d found out I was pregnant, Ramsey and I had been hiking the trails around Mount Rainier. One second, we’d been debating where we’d find the best view. The next, I was puking in the bushes.
We hadn’t exactly been trying to get pregnant, but I’d forgotten to get my birth control prescription filled. We were nomads of sorts, so everyday tasks occasionally slipped my mind. Ramsey had known we weren’t covered that month, and I’d reminded him repeatedly when he spent an entire rainy weekend in London between my legs. We were at a point in our marriage where we loved our lives touring the world, but secretly, we were both ready to settle down.
When I was done fertilizing the bushes that day, I found Ramsey sitting on a rock, scrolling through his phone. He smiled at me, love and excitement blazing in his eyes, and said, “So I found a place we can rent in Spokane until we figure out where we want to live permanently. It doesn’t have a room for a nursery, so we’ll have to decide before he’s born.”
I sat on his lap and rested my head on his shoulder. “What makes you think it’s a boy?”
He placed his hand on my stomach. “God knows I’d end up in prison again if He gave me a daughter.”
I giggled, covering his hand with my own. “You know I might just have a stomach bug. I haven’t taken a test or anything.”
“Nah, he’s in there, Sparrow. I can feel it. Life’s about to change again.”
“That’s a good thing though, right?”
His eyes sparkled as he peered up at me. “He’s a part of you and a part of me. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Nine months later, our son was born looking just like his father—smile and all.
We never left Washington, though we did buy a house on ten acres. There had to have been a thousand trees on our heavily wooded property. But within two days of moving in, Ramsey had picked a favorite and dubbed it ours.
It wasn’t the same. It didn’t hold over twenty years of memories—good, bad, and ugly. But with Ramsey at my side, we made new memories—good, great, and amazing.