Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 21955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 110(@200wpm)___ 88(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 110(@200wpm)___ 88(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
“My god, Julia. You’re so beautiful,” I breathed.
She leaned towards me and caressed her own breasts, lifting them and pushing them together. She brushed her pale pink nipples with her fingers.
I couldn’t resist. I reached towards her, anticipating the smoothness on my hand.
Just then, the car started to jolt. I’d let the car drift off the road. Too fast, we were approaching a huge tree. I didn’t even have time to brake or turn the wheel.
Everything ended in the sound of shattered glass and the scream of twisted metal.
Julia
“Yes, I remember the accident!” I shouted in Nick’s face.
“How much of that day do you remember?”
“All of it, as far as I know.”
“But…the doctors said you couldn’t. That after the trauma and being unconscious you wouldn’t.”
“They were wrong! Doctors don’t know everything, Nick.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it didn’t matter.”
“Of COURSE it matters! What could possibly matter more?”
“What you did matters more. What you didn’t do matters more. I woke up in the ICU, and my fiance had disappeared. I’d loved you for years; I finally found out you loved me too—or you said you did; and right away you abandoned me when I needed you most.”
“But they said you would forget the whole day! I thought you would wake up and discover that your life was ruined and it was all my fault. Not the fault of the man who loved you, because you would forget all that--your stepbrother’s fault. How could you stand to look at me every day? How could you not hate me?”
“How could you not have stuck around to find out what I remembered? Would it have cut into your busy life to wait another day or two? I’ll tell you what I think, Nick, I think that’s all bullshit! It’s a justification. You didn’t want a wife who was disabled.”
“What? No—” he started to say, but I knew he would deny it.
“I get it, it’s a lot to ask of anyone. But that’s what ‘in sickness and in health’ means. And you couldn’t handle it. Which, fine, you didn’t sign up for that. We were only engaged for what? Twenty minutes?”
“Julia, that’s not it. That’s not the reason, I swear.”
“Of course you can’t admit it. But doesn’t the timing seem strange to you, if it wasn’t about me being in a wheelchair? As long as I was disabled, you were nowhere to be found. Now I’m walking again, doing great, and suddenly you swoop back into my life. Doesn’t that seem…suspicious to you?”
“But when I first came back, I thought you were still in the wheelchair! Don’t you remember that day in the hospital?”
“Sure. But I don’t believe it. A man with a billion dollars can find out anything he wants to know, including the health status of anyone on the planet. Right?”
“Maybe he can, but it didn’t occur to me. Wait, I can prove it! Come with me.”
“What? I will not. I’m going home.”
“Julia, please. If you ever cared for me. Let me show you this one thing. Please give me this one chance. If it doesn’t convince you, I’ll do whatever you want. If you want me to go away and leave you in peace, I will, even though it might as well kill me.”
He had tears in his eyes, actual tears. I didn’t want to go with him, but at the same time, I wanted it more than anything. If I could know for sure that he didn’t leave because I was disabled--what mattered more than that? I wanted to keep him from being able to hurt me again, but it was too late for that anyway.
“Okay, Nick,” I said softly. “Okay. You can show me whatever it is.”
He picked up my hand and kissed it, then led me to the parking deck. We were soon headed out of town, in the same direction he’d taken before, when he’d shown me the tree we hit in the accident.
“Where are we going?”
“Out to the lake.” He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask anything else. I was emotionally wrung out. Uncertainty is hard for me to take, and everything was up in the air during that car ride. I thought I had my future all mapped out without Nick, and now? Did he want to be with me, or was he leaving? It was a beautiful time of day, when afternoon edges into evening, and I tried to just notice the beauty and stop thinking.
Soon we were at the lake, but Nick turned away from the public beach side, and onto a private drive. It was an old dirt road, and I could see glimpses of the lake through the pines as we bumped along. We turned onto a smooth new gravel driveway, and pulled up beside a big, new, lodge-style log house. We got out, and Nick led me behind the house. The back of it was mostly huge windows, and I could see why: the house looked out over the lake. At this hour its mirror-like surface was pure gold.