Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
This is your home, I remind myself. What are you going to do? Move to him? You can’t just uproot your life and move to him, then what? I don’t move from the corner, even when the light turns green and then red again. I turn, walking back home and calling Gabriel, who answers after two rings, and I see he’s now in his office. “How is this going to work?” I ask him, and he just stares at me.
“I have no idea,” he answers me, rubbing his hands over his face. “I don’t want to spend too much time thinking about it, or else it’ll make me sick.”
“We have to figure it out, I guess,” I mumble. “Like, are we dating? Are we a couple?”
“Of course we’re a couple.” He chuckles. “Sweetheart, we were a couple the minute I kissed your lips.”
“Yes, but I live here, and you live there.” I tell him something he already knows.
“You can come here. I can come there,” he replies, and I want to ask him and then what, but I don’t. “I’ll be up this weekend, and we can see how your schedule is.”
“Fine,” I concede. “I’m going to go and get something to eat. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I’m about to hang up when he says, “We’ll figure it out, Sweetheart.”
28
GABRIEL
I grab my phone and tuck it in my back pocket before slamming the truck door closed and walking to the glass door, pulling it open. Looking around, I see no one out front, so I knock on the white door. It looks like a regular door, but it’s a stainless-steel door that you can’t get through. The buzzing sound starts, and I pull open the door to step into my father and my Uncle Casey’s bullpen, as they like to call it.
“Hey,” I say, spotting my father and Casey but also my grandfather, Jacob. When I catch all three of them, I stop. “Am I in trouble?” I ask nervously, seeing all three of them sitting around one desk.
My father leans back in his chair, just smirking at me. “I love that even though you are a grown-ass man, you still are scared of your dad.”
“I’m not scared of my father; I’m just wondering why I’ve all of a sudden been summoned here.” I walk over to my grandfather and bend to hug him.
“I don’t get a hug?” my father questions, not moving, because he knows I’m not going to give him a hug now that he’s teased me.
I walk over to the desk next to the three of them and lean back on it, crossing my feet in front of me. “To what do I owe this honor?” I take off the cowboy hat and scratch my head. “Even though I think I might have an idea.”
“You think you have an idea.” Casey chuckles as he leans his forearms on the desk. “What the hell were you thinking?” I shake my head, knowing he needs to get it all out before I can even make my argument. “Of all people for you to get involved with. Do you know what it’s like to have to sit down with Matthew Grant and have him poke fun because he thinks I didn’t know?” Again he’s not asking me to answer him, so I just look at my father, who is trying to hide his grin by looking down at his hands in his lap. “I knew something was up with you two when you bought her that horse.”
“Are you done?” Jacob asks him, and Casey just glares at him. “What difference does it make who he’s with? What matters is what is he going to do about it.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, confused. I’m about to kick off from the desk, thinking he is saying one thing when he’s not.
“Hold your horses, son,” my father intervenes. “What he’s saying is, now that she’s pregnant, what’s going to happen?”
“What do you mean?” I look at all three of them, who shake their heads at the same time in the same way.
“Son.” My father usually starts with this when he thinks I just said something stupid. “She is carrying your child and lives in New York.” The minute he says the words, my stomach sinks because it’s been on my mind ever since she told me she was pregnant. “And you live here.”
“Yeah, I know”—I extend my arms to the sides and lean them on the desk—“that isn’t something I don’t know.”
“When is she moving here?” Casey asks me the loaded question I now know is why I was called here.
“She isn’t moving here.” I keep out the word yet because I’m not even sure.
“What do you mean she isn’t moving here?” My father sits up in his chair. “How the hell is that going to work?”