Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 70661 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70661 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
When my tears finally ran dry and my heart was stitched back together, I turned away. “I’m ready to go…” I turned my back on the grave and walked to the black car, wondering how my father would feel about Maverick if he were still alive. When Caspian wanted to kill me, Maverick stayed on my side. It was something I had to remember on his bad days, that he was a good man underneath that hostility.
He walked me to my car door. “You want to get something to eat? Something to get your mind thinking about something else?”
I didn’t have an appetite at all. The only thing I wanted to do was go home and press my fingers to the keys of the piano. Music got me through my darkest times. “No. I think I’m just going to go home.” I opened the door.
He closed it. “I’m here. Use me.” He placed his body in front of the door so I couldn’t open it again. He forced me to back up, to move to the rear of the car. We were the only visitors to the cemetery, so we could have any conversation we wanted. Not even the dead could hear us. “I’m sorry I was an ass to you before. If I’d known you needed me, I wouldn’t have talked to you that way.”
“How about you just stop talking that way anyway? Sounds like a good rule of thumb.” The criticism flew out of my mouth quickly, my suppressed rage taking the reins.
He obviously pitied me when he didn’t fire back. “I’ll work on it…”
I was frustrated about my life, disappointed this was where I’d ended up. Both of my parents were gone, and I was married to a man who would never be more than my friend and occasional lover. My life felt stale.
He studied me, one hand resting on top of the car. “If it makes any difference, I really do feel like shit. I hate watching you cry…”
“You told me you liked it.”
“In a very different context.” He lowered his hand, his eyes still focused on me. “I wouldn’t have picked you over my father if I didn’t care about you. Hearing your tears through the phone was like glass scraping against a chalkboard.”
“If that’s the case, stop flipping back and forth. Stop being kind to me one minute and then cold the next.”
“Sorry…it’s just how I am.”
“Well, that’s not how you should be with me. You can trust me and I can trust you. We’re all each other has now…”
That seemed to mean something to him because his eyes softened. He went from being a brooding man to being a kind soul. “I’ve never been married before…I’m not sure how this works.”
“If you aren’t going to kill me, then this is a lifetime commitment. That means we need to be good to each other, every single day. We need to be there for each other. We need to trust each other. Stop keeping me at a distance, and let me in. I’m the most reliable person in your life right now.”
He fit in with the Tuscan countryside behind him, a beautiful Italian man with great appreciation for the soil, the trees, and the gorgeous landscape that surrounded us every day. He drank wine like water, he perfected cheese for a living, and he knew how to make love like a man passionately in love. “I’m not good at letting people in. I don’t think I’ll ever be good at it.”
“Why not?”
He turned his gaze and surveyed the fields around us, Florence in the distance. “I’ve lost my mother…my sister…and now my father. I’ve had my heart broken too many times.”
“But you haven’t lost your sister and your father.”
“My sister is a completely different person now. Our relationship isn’t the same. Memories that I have with my family will need to be locked in a vault because I’ll never make new ones. My mother was the nucleus that held us all together, and the second she was gone, we all broke apart. I don’t need to explain that my father is different too…that I’m not a son to him. Even the tightest relationships fall apart. Friends say they’ll be close forever, and then life gets in the way…and they don’t speak for years. Nothing ever stays the same, nothing is ever concrete. The people you love are the ones you lose.” It was the longest monologue he’d ever given me, an open window into the clouded thoughts in his mind. He displayed his vulnerability and finally spoke his mind freely, showing me his old wounds and how painful they still were.
I understood his pain because I’d lost both of my parents, but he had a different kind of pain that I’d never had to carry. When my mother was gone, my father was still there. But every member of his family quickly disappeared, like they’d never been there at all. He couldn’t take a compliment because he hardly ever received them, and he couldn’t accept love because he hadn’t gotten that either. His mother’s death had traumatized him in so many ways. Now he was afraid to let me in, let anyone in, because it seemed pointless. “I’m not going anywhere, Maverick.”