Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
“You guys need anything else?” I asked.
Tommy’s smile dropped, and so did his voice. “Hey, you okay?”
I nodded and tried to smile. “Amazing.”
And then I walked back to the kitchen like I was going to fetch something, found Karim and begged him to take over, raced up to my bedroom to crawl into my bed, and cried for two straight hours over the mess that Monroe’s simple words had made of my love life.
Was it possible Judd Kincaid was IndexEcho?
If he was, then he wasn’t dead, which was a miracle…
Except it also meant my sisters were right and he’d ghosted me four years ago, which would rip my heart out all over again.
And… oh, fuck. Did Judd know I was DrunkenPoet? Had he known all along and hidden it from me?
Months of our exchanged conversations flowed through my memories as I fought the temptation to pick up the phone and call him to clear all this up. That would be reactionary and foolish. Accusing Judd of being IndexEcho—even asking him if they might be the same person—would damage our relationship if it wasn’t true. What would that say about my trust in him?
And if I made the accusation and it was true…
I closed my eyes and tried not to cry again because I’d already cried enough for this fucking man. But it was hard not to feel like fate had it out for me. I’d had something amazing at my fingertips, and it had been yanked away four years ago. And now here I was again, on the verge of losing the very next man I’d let myself fall for…
Either that or I’d been screwed twice by the same man.
I curled on my side, mashing my face into my pillow, and despite—or maybe because of—all this uncertainty, I found myself missing the citrus scent of Judd’s sheets. The comfort I’d felt falling asleep in his arms, in his bed—
I lifted my head as a memory came freewheeling into my thoughts.
The ball cap I’d seen in Judd’s closet before falling asleep weeks ago.
Summer Song.
At the time, I’d been half-asleep and hadn’t processed why it seemed familiar. Why it had given me an extra level of comfort. Now I realized it wasn’t just the words on the cap that were familiar but the logo.
Summer Song was a pale ale. IndexEcho’s favorite. From a brewery near his hometown, he’d said. And we’d joked about how I liked the name because it reminded me of a poem.
Like a lovesick idiot, I’d looked it up online after he’d mentioned it, desperate to get my hands on some just so I could drink his favorite beer and have an additional connection with him. I’d memorized the logo so I could look for it at the store. And when I hadn’t been able to find it locally, I’d gone back online to see where it was brewed and where I could find it. It was a craft brew made and bottled in West Virginia. And it wasn’t distributed anywhere outside of the mid-Atlantic.
Which, last I checked, was where Philadelphia was.
IndexEcho was Judd Kincaid. It was becoming obvious, and I could no longer deny it.
Did I even want to deny it? For so long, it had been my greatest wish that IndexEcho was alive and well in the world, even if he didn’t want to be with me. Now, not only was he alive, but he was in my life. He’d made love to me. He’d held me for hours. He wanted to date me.
But another thing Monroe said also echoed in my head. I got the feeling he was probably just taking a break before finding another big ARFF job somewhere.
Judd and I had never talked about the possibility of him leaving Legacy, but IndexEcho had talked about what he wanted his future to look like. His job had been important to him. Part of his identity. Surely, he’d want to go back to aviation firefighting at some point.
And, hell, even if that had changed in the past few years, Judd was an active firefighter. He didn’t just hassle small businesses about code violations. I’d seen him injured once already from a wildfire. I’d seen the burn scars on his body. I knew how often he was in the shit with his crew—situations that often led to serious injuries…
Or worse.
I’d lost IndexEcho once when he’d only been a dream, a fantasy. Could I handle losing him again now that I knew he was Judd Kincaid, the man I’d surrendered my body and my trust to?
No. Absolutely not. Not a chance.
And I was angry that he’d even consider putting me in that situation.
Again.
We were barely into… whatever this was. Hell, we hadn’t even had a real date yet. And already I felt betrayed and heartbroken.
My tears came again, cooling the worst of my anger, hardening it like volcanic rock.