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)
“We get her in the ground, and that’s all he can talk about. He wants a DNA test.”
Oh fuck.
This was going to get worse, I knew it.
“I said I didn’t give a shit about a DNA test. I didn’t know who Derek Johannsen was. But I knew who my dad was. Dad wouldn’t listen. So I took it, reiterating that I couldn’t care less. I wasn’t gonna meet this man. He had nothing to do with me. I had a father. I loved him. And that was it.”
“Yes, that was it,” I agreed carefully.
“It wasn’t it, May,” he bit out. “The results came back. Mom didn’t lie. I wasn’t Dad’s kid. He got one thing good from her. Me. He had one shot at leaving a legacy of his time on this earth. Me. She took that away from him. She was fucking dying, and she still cut his legs right out from under him. She didn’t have to tell him that shit. She did. She did it just to be nasty. Cancer had eaten her away, she can’t move, can’t even go to the bathroom by herself, but she sure had the energy to gut him.”
“But your dad knew how you felt about him.”
“Yes. He wrote that in his suicide note.”
The tears instantly hit my eyes.
“No,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” he countered. “Put a shotgun under his chin and blew his head off.”
I latched on to his hand with both of mine. “Oh my God, Hutch.”
“I was back on base. I got more leave.”
I leaned to him, pulling his hand to my mouth, holding it tight, kissing it between saying, “Oh my God, baby. I’m so damned sorry.”
“Me too.”
I dropped my forehead to our hands and squeezed hard, pulling in breath to try to hold it together.
“I saw his play.”
I lifted my head to look at him again.
“He gave his life to her in order to give me what he thought I needed. His note told me he loved me. It told me he was sorry. It told me he was proud of me, that I was born his son, and he would die, and I was still his son. But he didn’t explain why. So I don’t know if she humiliated him so deeply with that, he couldn’t live with it. Or if he couldn’t live with having given so much to a woman and her son only to lose everything, first her, then me.”
“I’m so sorry he got to that dark place, baby,” I whispered.
“I met a woman once,” he started like I didn’t say anything.
Would this ever end?
“We were getting serious,” he went on. “Told her about this Johannsen guy, didn’t get to the dad part. And she laughed.”
I dropped his hand and slammed back into my chair, snapping, “I’m sorry?”
“I think you heard me, baby,” he replied. “She told me we had to laugh about this stuff.”
“What an asshole,” I clipped.
And no wonder it took so long for him to tell me this story if some bitch reacted to it like that.
“Agreed.”
“I don’t…I really don’t know what to say about all of this, honey,” I admitted.
“There isn’t anything to say. Maybe I looked for them, women like my mom, because it was all I knew. Maybe I fell into them, for the same reason. They weren’t her, except maybe Bree. What I reckon is, I found them so I could get done with them so I could save myself from living my father’s life.”
I grabbed his hand and pulled it to my lips again and just left it there, saying nothing, though I was glad he understood this, even if I hated he had to come to the understanding.
His gaze roamed my face, and the bitterness and anger slid from his tone when he said, “Now, I got you. And I do not know what to do with you.”
I kept hold of his hand even as I took it from my mouth, and replied, “I’ll get you there, Hutch. That there being, you don’t have to do anything with me. I’m not saying relationships aren’t work. I’m not saying we’re not going to have to keep our eye on it and keep it strong. But I’ll pull out the high school basketball stud, cheerleader sex fantasy when it becomes necessary.”
His body jerked with his surprised bark of laughter before he asked, “What?”
“Don’t tell Abigail I told you, but inadvertently, you rocked Brett’s world.”
His chest moved with laughter.
A good sign.
“I don’t think I wanted to know that,” he said.
“Probably not. However, the point is, it wasn’t about you. Not really. It was about Brett. Their marriage. Keeping it fresh. Alive. Looking out for each other. Finding ways to make it interesting. Finding ways to show he would always be her stud, and she’d be his cheerleader.”
After I said that, he leaned to me, pulling my hands to press them to his chest.