Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Because what if her pregnancy had been the result of being raped? The Barclays treated her like it was her fault. Like she was tainted because of what had happened to her. Hollis had left for Princeton and hadn’t even said goodbye.
“Will you go get the nurse, Dad?” she asked. “And take the baby?” Tears began streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t hand him over to a virtual stranger. She couldn’t.
“Do you want to think about it a little longer, honey? If you still need time, everyone will understand.”
“No, Dad. Please, take him.” She couldn’t drag this out. It would only hurt worse.
Her dad paused, so much pain in his expression. “Sure, sweetheart.”
She leaned in and put her lips on the baby’s head, breathing him in as her tears wet his skin. “I love you,” she murmured. “I will always love you, every moment of every day.” Her heart ached so badly she wondered how it could keep beating, and she felt a primal wail reverberating through her marrow.
But she’d chosen this. It was right.
Her dad stood and leaned in, taking the sleeping baby from her arms. “This is the most loving choice, CamCam.” He looked down at his grandson and then leaned forward and kissed him too. “He’s going to have a beautiful life.”
Cami turned her head, the scream rising higher, tears streaming faster so that she could barely see. It was right. It was best. So why was she vibrating with the wrongness? “Go,” she choked. She heard her dad move away and gripped the handrails at her side so she wouldn’t bolt out of bed and tackle him, begging to take her baby back, the little soul that had been with her as she’d fought for her life.
The door opened and then closed with a click, and Cami turned her face into the pillow and sobbed.
Chapter Fourteen
Eleven Years Later
His grandfather’s home was an off-putting mix of putrid trash and sweet-smelling flowers. The old man had obviously deteriorated mentally in the last few years of his life, if the place he’d called home was any indication. It’d always been eccentric, just like the man who’d lived there, but it’d never been filthy. Not like this.
Rex ran his hand over what looked like a carburetor on top of the kitchen table, the remainder of its surface piled with other random car parts and old milk jugs that hadn’t been rinsed and were now growing what might be antibiotic farms inside their damp shells. Rex grimaced and looked away. He’d thought he’d be able to haul any junk to the dump using his pickup truck, but it was clear that wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, he’d have to rent one of those driveway dumpsters and maybe even hire some extra muscle.
He noticed the flowers in random vessels here, there, and everywhere. They were all dead now, but at some point—and though he hadn’t so much as removed a lick of trash—his grandfather had attempted to dress up the place with colorful blossoms.
Something about that felt like a decent metaphor for his grandfather’s life, but he couldn’t quite muster the mental motivation to work it out and form it into a coherent sentence.
What he could work out was that the twinge in his gut was guilt. He should have made a point to get back here and check on the old guy. Or at least to say goodbye. He’d justified it by telling himself it was quick at the end. His grandfather had been selling scrap metal one day and then was in the hospital the next. He was dead a month later, unsurprising after a lifetime of heavy drinking and lack of basic health care.
Rex had loved his grandpop, though his mother’s father had been too crotchety for real closeness. But he had taught Rex how to tie a tie and how to look a man square in the eye when you met him, and he’d instilled the pride Rex felt in serving his country because he’d done the same.
But he’d also been quick to anger, and he had a real mean streak when he started drinking. He’d drunkenly called Rex names when Rex was younger—shit for brains, Chief Numbskull, just to name a few.
Names that his grandfather had seemed to erase from his memory completely come the next day, and yet somehow those forgotten slurs had felt tattooed into Rex’s skin. Which was honestly ridiculous because, even then, Rex knew very well he wasn’t a numbskull, nor did he have shit for brains, and the “Chief” bullshit had just been plain stupid. And low. What could Rex do about the other half of his heritage? He hadn’t had a say in who fathered him.
So yeah, that insult was laughable, but it still stung. Because it was the pure meanness that hurt him more than the names, and the fact that they’d been hurled at him by someone who was supposed to be on his side.