Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
“These are good questions.”
She was right.
They were.
“Pissed Dad off because he didn’t have good answers. Once the reconciliation happened, it was a rough go, but it got better with time.”
“So everyone is together now?”
“Yeah. Mom and Dad live in a house bigger than the one we grew up in. Mom’s happy. I think Dad’s a little lost, mostly how he gave twenty plus years of his family’s life to that, and now he’s seventy and that time is just gone. He eventually saw it. We had a family meeting. We decided it was too much of a pain in the ass to change our names back to Wells. All the wives would have to change. Lucas had a daughter by then. Jenn was pregnant. So I’m Zachariah Lazarus, but secretly, I hate it. It sounds made up because it is. That’s why I like Rus. I gave that to myself. Simple, and somehow, it’s just mine.”
“I get that. And I like the name Rus. It’s very you, and not because it’s simple. Just open and honest and modest. Definitely you.”
Nice.
“That was a lot,” he noted.
“I don’t know. My many-greats grandmother was essentially human trafficked, ended up in a whorehouse slash saloon at fifteen, in a fur trading town in the middle of nowhere. At seventeen, she shot her pimp because he was an asshole and then took over his girls. And we’ve stayed in that business, for the most part, for over a hundred and thirty years.”
“Somehow, your back story seems more normal than mine.”
And he got the soft laughter again.
“I abandoned my wife for my job.”
There, he did it again.
“Oh, Rus,” she whispered.
“I did. You get caught up in it. I was away from home a lot. She had a job too. Made good money and to make good money, there’s stress. And she had the kids. And the house.”
“Did you get what your dad got? The ultimatum. Your job or her?”
“I came home to her fucking some guy who looked like me in our bed. I knew the minute I saw them I’d never be able to get over it. Thing is, she didn’t ask me to.”
Lucinda said nothing.
Still, he agreed, “Yeah.”
“That wasn’t nice,” she snapped.
“She warned me.”
“She warned you she was going step in, that being in your bed with another man?”
“Not in those words, but I knew she was unhappy. But I was working a big case. I would have let a lot of people down if I walked away from it, as she’d asked me to do. And I was a soldier, then a cop, then an agent. What am I going to do? Become a PI? Consult for one of those firms that do hideous shit but pay a lot of money, so I have a boat, but I can’t sleep at night? Give up the field for a job teaching, which might kill me?”
These were good questions.
Because now that he knew he was getting out, what was he going to do?
He had two kids in college, for fuck’s sake.
They’d saved, but he had condoms and bikinis to buy.
“No, you do what you love. You do what you’re good at. And your wife finds a way.”
“There’s gotta be compromise, baby.”
“Says who?” she retorted. “Sure, if you lose your whole family because you placed them in a cult and made five people live in a two-bedroom house, you think on things. You marry a soldier, who becomes a cop, who goes into the FBI, you know what’s happening.”
“You’re only defending me because you like me,” he teased.
“I do like you, Rus. But I’m defending you because, even if you grow apart from your husband, even if the way your life became is not something that makes you happy, you walk away. You don’t fuck another man in your marital bed for the sole purpose of causing pain to someone you at least used to love.”
Rus stared at the fire.
“I can’t believe she cheated on you. You. My God,” Lucinda said in his ear. “What a bitchy thing to do.”
“She was hurting.”
“So she hurt you?” she asked. “Jaeger and I were drifting apart. I have a problem. I’m a strong woman who likes men. Quote-unquote real men. Like it or not, it’s not progressive or current or hip anymore, but for me, it’s the way it is.”
Jesus.
That was good to hear.
“What can I say?” she asked rhetorically. “I grew up in a fucking wilderness around men in trucks who chop logs as recreation and bathe in freezing cold creeks like they’re Jacuzzis. It’s what I know.”
Now Rus was staring at the fire, sipping bourbon and smiling.
“Or maybe it’s just what I like,” she continued. “Sadly, this type of man, for the most part, is at odds with the woman I am. This, too, is a generational flaw. Mom and Dad divorced because Dad couldn’t deal with being home with me and Porter while Mom was managing the business. Gramps was hilarious, and he loved Gram a lot, she loved him too, but after they had Mom, they didn’t live together. They got together often. But they didn’t live together. So I fell in love with Jaeger. We committed to each other. I realized we weren’t going to work, and we sat down and worked out how not to be together. We don’t hate each other. We talk. We even call each other and catch up. I don’t talk to him all the time, but I know what’s going on in his life, and he knows what’s going on in mine, and a lot of that doesn’t have to do with Madden.”