Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
So that was what I did until she was able to stand more.
I fished.
And didn’t catch a single damn thing.
Every single bite I got was taken by the sharks, and eventually I said, “Let’s move.”
She patted the chair. “I’ll stay right here.”
I didn’t go up to the tower.
I went to the lower area and steered us to another of my favorite spots.
And this time, I caught a fish.
“Pretty,” she said as she saw my catch. “But how do you get that off?”
“That” was a shark, and I grinned.
Then I cut the line. “Like that.”
She giggled, and it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.
I’d forgotten how much that sound had meant to me.
With both of us being quiet as I fished, catching a few keepers, I thought a lot about what I would’ve done had she shown up before I’d married Danyetta.
I would’ve still had my baby.
But I don’t think I would’ve gone through with the marriage to her.
I would’ve realized what a mistake it was, and I wouldn’t have allowed myself to stay away from Morrigan any longer.
I would’ve been happier.
I would’ve had a completely different life.
I would’ve never gone to prison, I’d imagine.
“I’ve been to prison,” I said suddenly.
Her eyes dilated as I turned, placed the reel into the holder between her legs, and gestured at her to reel it in.
She leaned over and did as I said, but still said, “I know.”
“I’m not a bad person,” I promised.
She looked at me, a bead of sweat popping out over her brow. “You think that I’d judge you for what you did?”
I didn’t know anything at this point. The woman I thought I knew would’ve told me that she hadn’t gone to school. She would’ve told me that she was back in town. She would’ve stopped me before I’d married Danyetta.
Not that I regretted anything about Danyetta, or Bowie. But I loved Morrigan. I’d never stopped loving her.
Loving Morrigan was a way of life for me.
I knew that it made me sort of a bad person, me having married Danyetta when I loved someone else. But Morrigan had been so certain in her path to becoming a doctor. And that path hadn’t included me. Maybe it was me punishing her in a way. Maybe it was just me and Danyetta making do the only way we knew how.
I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I cared what Morrigan thought of me. And, even though she’d let me marry someone else, that didn’t hurt me enough to ever force her to stay away.
“I think that you’re entitled to your opinions of me,” I hedged.
Morrigan started to reel, her brows pinching in concentration.
She took so long to say anything, I’d thought the subject had been dropped.
But, as she reeled, she finally turned to look at me.
And what I saw there made my stomach ache.
“I didn’t want you to be beholden to take care of me,” she finally said. “I’m okay being alone. I don’t want to have to force anyone to stay when they deserve something way better than what they’d get when it came to me.”
I felt my stomach clench. “Wouldn’t that have been my choice, though?”
She stopped reeling and the rod damn near bent in half as whatever fish we had on the line sensed freedom.
“Wouldn’t it have been my choice on whether we broke up or not in the first place?” she asked. “Shouldn’t it have been my choice on whether to go or not?”
I looked away.
But it didn’t matter.
All I could see was the anger in her brown eyes.
They’d always been captivating.
Swirling swaths of brown caramel and whiskey, they made my heart physically ache.
“You wouldn’t have gone,” I finally settled on.
“I wouldn’t have,” she agreed.
I still remembered that day like it was yesterday. The day that my life changed forever, because I’d made it change.
Our separation had been amicable, but it’d been heartbreaking at the same time.
I’d thought we’d both settled on the choice, but maybe she’d agreed because she knew that I wouldn’t take no for an answer…
• • •
“I want you to go to school.”
She looked at me, her beautiful brown eyes, my brown-eyed girl, with such hope, that it made my heart physically ache.
“I want to stay with you,” she countered.
“No, you don’t,” I said. “Don’t you want to become a doctor? Be able to help all those people that need you? You can’t do that here. You won’t be who you want to be by staying in Accident. And, baby, it’s not forever. If you get to thirty, and you have that doctorate in your hand, and you want to still be with me, I’m here. For you. I’m always here. And I’ll be going away to school, too. So I won’t be here moping and crying, waiting for you to come back.”