Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
My stomach dropped at this news.
“But Mom needs to go home and check on Dad. So, if you’re still in town, can you swing by for a half hour, at most an hour so she can go look in on him?” he concluded.
I looked up at Hutch and mouthed, Brett needs us.
Hutch nodded.
Because of course he did.
“Absolutely, Brett,” I said into the phone. “Hutch and I are at the Town Hall. We should be there in a few.”
The relief was palpable in his, “Thank you. Gotta go.”
“Bye,” I said, but he was already gone, and that didn’t give me good feels either. “Brett took Abigail to the hospital. He needs us to look after the kids,” I said to Hutch.
“Let’s go,” he replied.
I turned to Mrs. Matthews, “I’m sorry, we—”
She was making a shooing motion with her hand and obviously heard me on the phone. “Go, girl, go.”
“Thanks, bye,” I replied as Hutch and I moved quickly down the aisle to the doors and through them.
Once we hustled through the sleet, got in his truck, and I told him Brett and Abigail’s address, I said, “His mom is there but his dad has this stuff too, so she has to go look in on him. Brett said half an hour to an hour.”
“I’m with you, May. Got nowhere else to be,” Hutch replied.
God, I was so, so, so, so, soooooo falling in love with this man.
We got to their house, hurried to the door, and the woman I’d met at a barbecue Brett and Abigail threw in the summer opened the door with a pajama-clad Emma on her hip.
“Missa Hutch!” she cried, throwing her weight toward him.
He caught her.
“Well, that shares you’re Hutch,” Chrissy, Brett’s mom said. And to me, “Hi, Mabel.”
“Heya,” I replied.
She let us in and did it talking quickly. “I won’t be long. Thank God Liam’s fever broke about an hour ago. He’s sleeping. Emma needs to go down. It’s past her bedtime.”
“Will you read me a bedtime story, Missa Hutch?” Emma asked.
“You bet,” he replied, turned to Chrissy and raised his brows.
“Up the stairs, first room to the left,” she instructed.
They took off.
She hastened to her coat.
“Do you know how Abigail is doing?” I asked, trying not to sound fretful, and probably failing.
“She was restless.” Chrissy didn’t bother not sounding fretful. “Talking in her sleep. When she’d be awake, she wasn’t actually awake but delirious and babbling. And her cough was hacking.”
Oh God.
That really didn’t sound good.
No wonder Brett was so worried.
Chrissy was at the door. “Brett took her in hours ago. They have a bed in the ER, but she hasn’t been seen because so many people with this flu are there.”
She was anxious to get away, so I told her, “Take your time. We have this. But can I get your number just in case?”
She dashed it off to me as I entered it into my phone.
“Yours?” she requested.
“Go,” I urged. “I’ll text you just now so you have it.”
“Thank you, Mabel,” she said with a worried smile.
She left.
I texted her so she had my number.
Then I went up the stairs and to the room to the right.
Being careful because I didn’t want to wake him, I opened the door.
There was a light on dim by Liam’s bed, so I could see he lay on his back, sleeping like the dead.
I carefully walked in and touched his forehead.
Clammy, but cool.
I left him be but also left the door open a titch so I could hear him if he called out for anything.
The door to Emma’s room was wide open, and I could hear Hutch’s low, mellow, beautiful voice telling her a story. He was speaking, but even so, the effect of his tone was like his singing.
Hiding my body to the side, I peeked around the doorframe to see Emma tucked tight in her bed, turned with her back to me, but her front to Hutch sitting on the floor, reading.
At this tableau, my chest caved in, I pivoted until my back was to the wall, slid down it to my ass on the floor, curled my knees up to my chest and hugged them.
My life. My luck. I’d meet this amazing man, and get the hint he was mine, only to find out he wasn’t.
And now, in that moment, I knew, after all I’d gone through, that would be the thing to end me.
Game over.
But Hutch Hutchison was Hutch Hutchison.
I knew it from the first song I heard him sing.
He was the biggest risk I ever took.
But he was the only risk that was worth anything.
THIRTY-FIVE
Maybe Not Now
Mabel
After Chrissy returned, Hutch and I left, and by the time we hit CR 10, the sleet was snow.
Only a dusting, but it already looked crusty on top of the wet that had iced over, and it was collecting on the roads, which Hutch, when he gave me his mountain-man-to-city-girl lecture about winterizing my truck, said could hide black ice.