Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
I didn’t look up.
The warning from last night to stay away from him fresh on my mind.
“How’d last night go?” Keely asked. “Copper won’t talk about it at all. Which only has us more curious.”
I told her everything that happened, though I left out the part about how Copper told me to leave him alone, ending with the pizza that he’d bought on the way home.
That’s when all the blank stares started to get to me.
“What?” I asked.
The Claybornes all shared a look between themselves.
“What?” Keely asked at the same time Chevy snorted.
“What, what?” I asked.
“You and Copper ate pizza last night?” she asked.
I frowned. “Yeah…why do you all look like you’re surprised?”
“Copper hates pizza,” Webber interjected as he plopped down beside me. “It’s like, his least favorite meal ever. If we order it, he gets a sandwich. He can’t stand pizza.”
I thought back to all the times that I’d suggested pizza over the four months that I’d known him, then felt my eyes well in tears.
I remember him saying once, in the very beginning, how he’d eat anything as long as it made me happy.
I’d thought that meant ‘he was an everything kind of person.’ Not that he’d literally eat anything just to see me eat.
“Um.” I scrubbed hard at my eyes. “I don’t know what to say.”
“He loves you. What kind of man would move into the house next door, and not use any lights whatsoever, just to make sure the girl he wants above all others is safe and happy, and has the help that she so obviously needs?”
I jerked my head up to see Searcy get up from the table and lean her hip against the pillar next to Webber’s crossed arms. She was staring at me with a soft expression on her face.
Since soft expressions didn’t happen often with Searcy, I paid attention to her. Or, I usually would.
But not this time.
Not when she was speaking complete nonsense.
“He moved in next door to me?” I gasped.
“He loves you. You’re his entire world. Of course he’d eat pizza, even if he despises it,” Searcy continued as if I hadn’t questioned her earlier words.
“What?” I pretended to not hear her.
“You heard me,” she called me on my bullshit.
“I don’t think I did,” I grumbled. “Listen, I think that you’re trying to make me feel better, but maybe the man just eats pizza to appease me. Maybe, it’s easier just to eat the pizza than let me in deeper. He’d rather me not know anything more about him so he doesn’t give me that kind of information.”
Searcy, showing her true colors, snorted.
“Don’t be dense, it’s not a good look on you.” She narrowed her eyes. “That man loves the hell out of you. He literally eats pizza when everyone and their brother knows he hates it to the point of leaving. He moved you into his house, when he had zero desire to do so at first. Then fell in love with you and your son. When he saw you starting to catch feelings, he pushed you away because he feels like you’re too good for the likes of him. You have this beautiful kid, and a full life ahead of you with nothing but rainbows and sunshine in your future. Then there’s him. An ex-con who plans on tanking his business to appease a deep-seated anger inside of him at the men that practically stole his life from him. He won’t have a job in eight months’ time, and he won’t have anything to show for his life but fifteen years in a federal penitentiary. What, exactly, did you expect him to do? Tie you to him with the love he so obviously feels? Don’t be dumb, Baker. Open your eyes and see what that man does for you. Getting freaked out that he’s been living in a house next door to you is stupid. He moved there because he loves the hell out of you and couldn’t stand the thought of you being too far away from him in case you needed him.”
That was my Searcy.
Hitting hard right where it hurt, no tact or build-up.
By the time she was finished speaking, my heart was in my throat and I was panting.
“Searcy…” Doc started, but Searcy held up her hand and said, “I’m not done.”
Doc closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, but let Searcy continue.
“He’s loved your kid for practically the entire time that he’s known him. Audric calls or texts, letting him know you need something, and he’s out of here. The only people that come first to these type of men,” she encompassed the men at the table. “Are their old ladies. It’s time for you to start fighting for him like he’s been fighting for you. Even if you didn’t know that he was doing it.”