Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
“Timeline-wise, babe, I don’t think you would have caught your grandfather before he passed anyway.”
“No, you’re right.” I exhaled hard. “I’ll just have to work through that regret, I guess.”
“I’m here anytime you want to talk about it.”
I leaned my head into his arm, then felt it slide around me before he leaned down to press a kiss to my temple.
“I know,” I agreed.
“So, what now?” he asked.
That was a good question.
“Um. I don’t know. I guess we could stay here tonight. Gary said he would be ready for me anytime. I can hopefully get my mind together by tomorrow.”
“Or the next day. We’re not in a big rush. Though, I would feel better if I had a weapon around here.”
“For the animals?”
“For anything.”
“I have a gun in my room.”
“You have a gun in your adolescent bedroom?”
“Yeah. There’s a massive gun safe hidden behind a cabinet, too. You can have your choice.”
“Well, then, I see no reason for us not to settle in for a few days. Let you get your head on right. Feel whatever you have to feel. Make the decisions you need to. Then we can go from there.”
“Mommy? Daddy?”
Denny’s voice had that slight worried edge, making both of us jump up and move toward the door.
“Let’s save this for later,” I said, meaning the bedroom.
We kind of drifted through the rest of the day, checking out the house, the grounds, eating leftovers from the diner for dinner, then showing Denny her special bedroom.
I answered about a million questions about the grandfather she never got to meet, about why she hadn’t met him, about what it was like to grow up on the ranch.
Eventually, she exhausted herself playing with her new toys and had us put her to bed in her new bedroom, but we had to agree to sleep in my old bedroom across the hall.
After she was asleep, I took York to the gun safe and watched his jaw go slack as he turned to face me.
“Was your grandfather some secret drug dealer? The fuck he need this many guns for?”
“I know. It’s crazy. But it was his favorite thing to treat himself to.”
He chose a gun and a waist holster to wear under his shirt around the house.
Then, after locking down the house for the night, we finally dropped onto the couch with cups of steaming instant coffee.
“The gun safe was impressive. The food storage was fucking insane.”
He wasn’t wrong about that.
My grandfather wasn’t paranoid, per se. But he liked being prepared. Which meant there was a whole temperature-controlled room full of freeze dried and vacuum-sealed food stores that would basically be good for the next thirty years. That was where we’d managed to find some instant coffee, sugar, and freeze-dried milk. I’d also taken out a tin of buttermilk pancake mix, maple syrup, and freeze-dried strawberries to make a somewhat serviceable breakfast in the morning.
“Yeah, we got shipments a few times a year to add to it. There are whole freeze dried meals, meats, veg, fruit, you name it. We could survive the apocalypse here. Though, the end times without fresh coffee doesn’t feel worth it,” I said, wrinkling my nose at my instant coffee.
“Denali is gonna get a kick out of the freeze-dried candy.”
“Yeah. She’s been so good about all this.”
“A plane full of toys, chicken tenders and fries for lunch and dinner, bison, cattle, and a new room full of goodies? She’s having a blast.”
That was true.
This was heavy for me.
For her, she had a lot of fun new experiences.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
“Actually,” I said, putting my mug down, then taking his and setting it aside, “the last thing I want to do is talk.”
I moved over to straddle him, wrapping my arms around his neck as his went around my waist, holding me close.
“Sounds good to me,” he said before my lips claimed his.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
York
Something had changed between us with coming to Wyoming.
The guards that Runa had kept mostly in place between us had completely lowered. I suddenly found myself allowed in—to her thoughts, her feelings, her bed at night.
After hooking up in the living room, we’d eaten half our body weight in freeze dried candy before taking turns showering in her en suite bathroom.
I checked the house again. We both looked in on a sleeping Denali. Then we tumbled into her childhood bed, getting lost in each other for hours, until our bodies were as spent as our minds.
We slipped back into our clothes in case Denali came looking for us, then Runa fell back against the pillows, laughing.
“What?”
“My grandfather was always worried about boys in my room.”
“Bet he never imagined he’d have to worry about a bearded, tattooed biker.”
“Actually, that was pretty high on his list of worries,” she said, shooting me a big smile.
She curled into me afterward. All the stress of the past few days caught up with her, knocking her out in minutes.