Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Telling her is worse than I expect. We’re standing in the kitchen, coffee between us, sunlight catching in her eyes. I don’t sit. If I sit, I won’t say it. “I gotta head back,” I tell her frankly.
She freezes. Just for a second. But I see it. The disappointment. I feel it too. “Oh,” she says. “Okay.”
That word. Too calm. Too careful. Protected. Guarded. Something that hasn’t been experienced between us before.
The goodbye sneaks up on us. There’s no dramatic moment, no argument. Just packing bags, hands brushing, pauses that stretch too long.
I’ve ridden out of towns without looking back more times than I can count. Left women sleeping. Left roads behind me without a second thought to traveling them again. For a man who loves the open road, leaving has always felt natural.
This doesn’t.
It feels like I’m pulling something out of myself and leaving it behind. That’s when I know without a doubt. I’m in deep. I have it bad.
We stand on the porch. My bike waits out front, bag strapped down, everything waiting. Danae hugs herself, like she’s trying to stay steady.
I step closer.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “Look at me.”
She does.
“This—” I gesture between us, useless with words all of a sudden. “This matters.” Her breath catches, but I keep going. “You matter,” I add. “And I don’t want this to just be something that happened while I was passing through.”
Her eyes widen, stunned, like I’ve tipped the ground under her feet. “I don’t know what it looks like yet,” I continue, voice low, honest. “Distance. Time. Life. But I want to find a way. I want this to be more.”
She opens her mouth. I don’t let her answer.
I kiss her instead.
Slow. Certain. A promise pressed into her lips so she doesn’t have to carry the weight of a response yet. So she can just feel it instead of figuring it out.
When I pull back, her forehead rests against mine.
“We’ll figure it out,” I murmur. Then I force myself to step away.
The bike roars to life beneath me. I don’t look back when I pull out, not because I don’t want to, but because I know if I do, I might not leave at all.
And for the first time in my life, the road feels like it’s taking me away from something instead of toward it.
Twelve
Danae
Two Weeks Later
My feet feel like they’re made of lead by the time I clock out. I haven’t felt this bad coming off a shift since I first did clinicals in nursing school. Twelve hour shifts are normal. Days back to back happen. Even sometimes staying at the hospital working shifts consecutively due to staffing issues or a random storm. Today the minutes dragged on feeling like an endless loop stuck at work. The kind of exhaustion that isn’t just physical. It’s in my pores. In my bones. In the place behind my eyes where the fluorescent lights live even after you leave the building.
My hair is scraped back, my scrub top smells faintly like disinfectant and old coffee, and my brain is still half in someone else’s room, beeping monitors, low voices, a family trying to be brave in a hallway as they make a difficult decision for a loved one’s care.
I sign the last thing I need to sign, filling in the last few notes on a chart, and letting my mind review the shift. I give a bed side report for the shift change relieving myself of the responsibilities of patient care. I force my mouth into the right polite shape for the night-shift charge nurse. I nod at an aid I barely recognize because turnover is constant and the life of a hospital swallows some people whole.
Then I walk. Through double doors. Through the hush of the lobby. Past the vending machines with their snacks. Past security, where the guard gives me a tired wave as he counts down his own shift to clock out time.
Outside, Arkansas early morning sky hits me as the sad reminder, I’m going home and he won’t be there. There won’t be coffee together before getting Papa cleaned up and then climbing in bed for myself to get a little sleep before getting up and taking over his care at dinner. Back to the same grind I had before meeting Miles.
The parking lot is lit in early morning sun rising as the overhead lights have cut out due to the timers. The air smells like wet asphalt and cut grass and something faintly metallic from the road. My car sits where I left it.
I’m already thinking about my grandfather, if he’s sleeping okay, if he’s going to wake up coughing and scared, if he’s going to need water or a hand on his shoulder or someone to tell him he’s home, he’s safe, and I’ll be there soon. It’s the same worry I have every morning when I head home.