Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 74898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
That way, Taco, as Tunnel liked to call her, wouldn’t bother us until the morning.
Then I heard him stop in the kitchen, and watched as the light flicked on and then off, seven times.
I smiled.
A lot of people didn’t even realize that Tunnel had this problem.
And honestly, it wasn’t so much a problem any more as much as it was just one of his quirks.
Tunnel told me many times that he had OCD. Yet, if I hadn’t known or wasn’t told by Tunnel himself, I wouldn’t have even realized that he did the odd things that he did.
When he kissed me seven times, I didn’t care. Not like he thought I cared.
In fact, I loved that he kissed me seven times. Seven times was six more times than most women got, and I was happy to have anything he was willing to give.
Sure, it was a little odd to have him turn around, head back into the house and go through his departure routine not once or twice but three times. It wasn’t a big deal, certainly not something that would make or break us. I just planned accordingly and allowed him the time he needed to go through this process.
Luckily, it was only when we were leaving—and only when he was leaving our home —that he had a routine he had to follow.
The soft tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap of Tunnel’s boot hitting the bottom step that led into our bedroom had me rolling over onto my belly and glancing at him as he moved surely through the dark toward the bed.
He knew I was awake and didn’t try to be quiet.
“What time did you go to sleep, baby?” he asked, dropping his keys down onto the nightstand.
His gun soon followed, and he bent down and put that one into the floor safe—something he’d been doing since the day that Sienna was born.
The next thing to go was his utility belt, followed by his flashlight being plugged in.
He then sat down in the chair and took off his boots while he waited for me to answer.
“About two hours ago,” I admitted. “I was reading before bed and lost track of time.”
His lips twitched. “That seems to be a new habit,” he growled. “What did you read this time? Anything good?”
Oh, yeah, it was good.
It was about a Highlander. How could it not be good?
“Yes,” I said matter of factly. “It was excellent. I think you’ll like it, too.”
He grinned and tossed his boots to the floor, then stood up and shucked his pants, followed shortly by his uniform shirt.
“I’m not so much excited about the book itself, but more what the book did to you,” he growled as he crawled across the bed to me.
I smiled into the darkness and held my hands out wide.
He accepted the invitation and dropped down fully on top of me.
I buried my face into his neck and moaned when I felt his heavy erection pressing into me.
“I’ll be very happy to show you.”
***
I looked at the empty space where Tunnel used to lay his head, and barely resisted the urge to cry.
My cat wasn’t here to keep me company, so there would be no crying jag today.
Tomorrow, maybe. But tonight, I needed to go to bed.
So, that was why I reached out and downed the two sleeping pills.
They didn’t do too much for me—not anymore. But I needed them to get a few hours of sleep.
If I didn’t have them, then sleep would elude me tonight, just like it did almost every night since the night Tunnel left me.
After swallowing the pills dry, I laid my head back down on the pillow and closed my eyes.
The bed didn’t even smell like him anymore. Nothing did. For the first month after Tunnel’s death, I didn’t change them. But I’d been forced to wash our sheets one night after Sienna had slept in our bed and promptly had a diaper leak all over them.
That’d been the most emotional load of laundry that I’d ever done. I’d bawled like a baby, and even Sienna, who didn’t even understand why I was crying, had joined me.
My eyes flicked over to my closet where all of his clothes were still hanging.
The clothes didn’t smell like him anymore, either, not even his dress uniform, which was also still hanging up in the closet.
Then there was his cut. That still smelled like smoke. It was unfair, it was sad, and I still had it hanging up where he placed it every night, ready and waiting for him to come back and use it…although he never would.
I hadn’t smelled him since his scent had dissipated from the clothing I kept…until tonight.
The man who had saved me from a ball-smack to the face had smelled like my Tun. He smelled exactly like him, right down to the deodorant and the faint hint of motor oil and gas that came with a man who rode a motorcycle and worked on them.