Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Full cheeks, full lips, cleft chin, brown eyes that didn’t look permanently puffy and purple-smudged from exhaustion.
I reached up, pulling my brown hair from its claw clip, then started to strip.
My body wasn’t fully back to normal yet. I still had another five or ten pounds to gain back to get where I used to be.
I wanted to get back to working out, lifting weights, but I knew that exercise could cause rapid blood sugar changes, and I’d been too paranoid to take the risk yet.
There was time.
I had to focus on my priorities.
And the top of that list was gathering intel.
Then planning my damn revenge.
After that, I could focus on getting my life more on track. Get better about monitoring. Learn to cook so I could better manage my levels. Find the courage to workout again. Learn to stop being so angry.
But today was not that day, so I took my shower, got dressed in all black, as usual, slipped on some hoop earrings and red lipstick, then went back into the kitchen to test again.
“Today is not my day,” I grumbled at the result, then went to get more juice.
I waited another fifteen minutes to test yet again. Finally, I was where I should be and could grab Sugar’s leash, my bag, and head out of my apartment.
“It’s a nice day, huh?” I asked her as we set a leisurely pace out of the apartment complex and down the palm tree-lined suburbs.
It had taken a lot of getting used to, living around downtown Fontana. It was an area my friends and I frequented a lot for fun. Though, yeah, if we really wanted to yuck it up, we went into L.A.
But up until the past year, I’d lived in the nearby rural area around Lytle Creek. Quiet. Seclusion. Away from prying eyes. Just how I liked it.
So living in a busy city with two hundred thousand other people? Yeah, that was not my ideal by any stretch of the imagination.
“We’re making do, though, right?” I asked Sugar as she stopped to read her pee-mail on a fire hydrant we passed as we got closer to the downtown city center. “Lotta news today, huh?” I asked as she sniffed away.
We didn’t get out much, so I tried to let her do all the sniffing she wanted when we were out on a walk.
We finally made it to the pharmacy.
I still tensed up each time we walked into a non-dog-friendly building, thanks to one random woman who came at me the second time I brought Sugar into a store with me right after I got matched with her. She’d been ranting and raving about people bringing dogs into grocery stores. And when I’d explained that Sugar was an actual, trained medical alert dog, she’d gone off about how I didn’t look sick and blah blah blah.
I patted myself on the back for having the self-control not to knock her out. But it went through my mind every single time we walked into a store now.
I wasn’t sure I exhaled until I had four bottles of glucose tablets, some juice, candy, a toy for Sugar, and a single diet soda, since I didn’t feel like carrying a whole pack all the way home.
“I’m really going to have to invest in a car now, huh?” I asked Sugar, who turned to look at me, her golden eyes bright as she pranced alongside me, her gaze constantly going to the bag, knowing the toy was hiding in there.
The walkability was one of the big factors in moving to this city. Well, the walkability and the anonymity, the ability to disappear into the crowd. Which felt like a very important factor when I’d been all alone in the world and on a dangerous organization’s ‘most wanted’ list.
I got my little apartment in a very average, very built-up community. I healed. I got sick. Then had my health turned upside down.
All the while, I stewed.
I fantasized.
I plotted.
But it was finally, finally time to set all that planning into motion.
We stopped off at the quad behind the apartment buildings, checking to make sure there was no one around who would complain, then found a stick and threw it for Sugar to catch until she was good and tired.
Then, finally, it was time to go inside for her to unwind, for me to throw together a salad with a few cubes of prepared chicken I still had left, then I hemmed and hawed about whether I needed a shot of insulin before finally giving myself a small dose before placing a grocery delivery order to stock up on easy things to eat for the next few days. Because I was planning on things getting busy.
That is, if everything didn’t go to hell later that night, though.
“Okay, baby,” I said a few hours later after taking Sugar for another walk to make sure she did her business and was at least a little tired out. “You had dinner. You have water. The TV is set to your favorite fish tank channel. You have everything you need to be a good girl while I’m gone.”