Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“I see the play,” I said. “Even though it was complimentary, and probably felt good to hear, being those things hid that it was all grooming.”
“All of it,” he agreed. “So Danielle is neck deep in wedding planning, and I get to the juncture I’m working with command to transition out of the military. And, May, baby, Christ. When I told her I was doing that, you would have thought I was speaking Chinese.”
I didn’t even know how to process how this amazing man had to put up with the opposites of the same spectrum tugging against his desire not to be on that spectrum at all.
Even so.
“I hate to say, but this is a weird thing that not only chicks, but dudes do,” I told him something he knew too well. “This tunnel vision where the tunnel only leads where you want it to go and you don’t see anything in your periphery in any kind of focus. My mom’s like that. But then again, she never grew up. Adults need to learn to see what’s in the periphery. It’s almost always important.”
“I know, but fucking hell, baby. It’s like I was a magnet for that shit.”
Exactly as I thought.
“Yeah,” I said morosely. “It really is.”
“I mean, how’m I supposed to know a fuckin’ golf game was her dad shaking hands and kissing babies to smooth me along on the career trajectory his girl picked for me that he, incidentally, never spoke word one to me about?”
“I don’t know, Hutch.”
“I loved her family as well. When it all fell apart, it was like I found out they were imposters. They misrepresented themselves. They were total shams. I didn’t know them at all.”
God, I hurt for him, because that had to sting.
“Did it get ugly?” I asked.
“For Danielle and Leigh, her mom, yeah. They were pissed as shit I wasn’t getting with the program. For Hewitt, the dad, he got blindsided too. Danielle had told him her plan was my plan. He couldn’t believe his fucking ears when we were having a big family showdown, with Danielle and Leigh trying to salvage the wedding, and the relationship. But I will say, at that point, it was the wedding. The stain on her reputation that a man would get shot of her four months before they were to say ‘I do’ was something both of them were scrambling to avoid. And Danielle admitted to her father that I told her my plans and goals, also admitting she’d intimated, her word, intimated, she was with me on them. I thought he’d lose his fuckin’ mind. And she didn’t intimate shit. She stated it plain.”
As thoughts of Hutch mired in this “big family showdown” clashed in my brain, I didn’t know whether to be pissed for him, or sick to my stomach that this magnificent man kept running up against this kind of thing.
And oh yeah.
Now, we were just in the gross and heavy.
“Well, I think I know you didn’t marry her,” I remarked.
“No, I didn’t marry her,” Hutch confirmed. “She made my last year in the military messy and brutal. And that fucking sucked. But the good thing about it was, it sure as fuck made me glad to get all the way from Virginia to Washington State.”
“I’m scared to ask how she made it messy and brutal,” I said hesitantly. “But I’d like to know.”
“Shades of that motherfucker who couldn’t process your rejection, except with Danielle, she couldn’t process I’d consider rejecting her and the life she’d built in her head that we’d be living. In the end, she was no loss, her mom was no loss, but her dad…now he was a loss. To me. And me to him. Any time I saw him on base, he got this sad look on his face like I was the ghost of his lost son walking down a sidewalk. He’d put a paper-thin mask over it and smile. Tried to retain a relationship that would never work because his wife and daughter were on his ass. It was a disaster.”
“Do you know what happened to her? Them?”
He nodded.
“Hewitt keeps in touch. My guess, clandestinely. Danielle got married. She also got divorced. Now she’s married again and has filed for divorce but is already dating another guy. Hewitt says she sabotages herself. He says she has a certain taste in men that clashes violently with her own personality. She wants to be in control. She wants to call the shots. I don’t know, he may be right. I just know that in a functioning relationship, no one is in control. No one calls the shots. You communicate. You listen. When you need to, you compromise. She’s destined to fuck herself over with this next guy. Hewitt knows it, but he’s resigned to picking up the pieces.”