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“Thank you, Graham.” “For what?” “Catching me before I hit the ground.”
“Sometimes you scare me,” she said candidly. “But most of the time your eyes just make me sad.” “I’m sorry, for anything I’ve done to scare you. It’s the last thing I’d want to do.” “It’s okay. Every time I walk in on you playing peekaboo with Talon, I see your true aura.” “My aura?” She nodded once. “To the rest of the world, you seem so dark and grim, but when you look at your daughter, everything shifts. Everything in your energy changes. You become lighter.”
“What is he doing in the backyard?” I asked, walking in that direction. Mary followed me, bouncing Talon the whole way. We walked into the sunroom and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows at Graham as he cut the grass. Against the small shed lay bags of soil and shovels. “Well, it seems he’s making a garden.” My chest tightened at the idea, and no words came to me.
for her 🥲
why? What are you doing?” “You asked me to make a garden,” he said, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “So I’m making you a garden.” My heart. It exploded. “You’re making a garden? For me?”
🥹🥹🥹🥹
Now all that’s left to do is perfect your bio.” “No need,” I told her, reaching for my cell phone. “I already did that part.” She raised an eyebrow, seeming unsure, and then went to read it. “New York Times bestselling author who has a six-month-old child. Married, but the wife ran away. Looking to hook up. Also, I’m five foot eleven.” “Everyone seems to put their height. I guess it’s a thing.” “This is awful. Here, I’ll fix it.” I hurried over to her, standing behind to watch what she typed. Looking for sex. I am a big dick. “I think you meant I have a big dick,” I remarked. She wickedly
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“Dress code?” He tossed it at me one last time and bit his bottom lip, allowing the small dimple in his right cheek to appear. “Anything you wear will be good enough for me.”
“Are you shitting me?” I asked with a knot in my stomach. “I shit you not. Best thing I’ve read in years. What changed?” I shrugged my shoulders and stood up from the chair. “I started gardening.” “Ah.” He smiled knowingly. “Lucy Palmer happened.”
Lucy’s eyes were glued to the performance, while mine stayed glued to her.
For the first time, I began to understand her fully. The beautiful girl who felt everything. Her emotions weren’t what made her weak. They were her strength.
This life is short, and you never know how many chapters you have left in your novel, Graham. Live each day as if it’s the final page. Breathe each moment as if it’s the final word. Be brave, my son. Be brave.” I rolled my eyes and started walking down the steps. “Professor Oliver?” “Yes?” “Shut up.”
no you shut up and listen to the wise old white guy
“Lucille Hope Palmer.” “Yes, Graham Michael Russell?” “You’ve never missed a holiday visiting your mother, right?” I bit my bottom lip and nodded. “Right.” “Okay then. Which way do we go?”
😭😭😭😭😭
After this I need you to go back to being my friend, because being friends with you makes me a better person. You make me a better human.”
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
“Being around you does something strange to me, something that hasn’t happened in such a long time.” “What happens?” He took my hand in his then led it to his chest, and his next words came out as a whisper. “My heart begins to beat again.”
complete flatline
His eyes glassed over as he looked at his daughter. “It’s only three days,” I told him. He nodded once. “Yes, I know, it’s just…” His voice dropped and he kissed Talon’s forehead. “She’s my world.” Oh, Graham Cracker. He made it so hard not to fall for him.
🧍♀️🚂
Go to work, and then come back to us.” I paused at my word choice and gave him a tight smile. “Back to your daughter.” He nodded then kissed her forehead once more. “Thank you, Lucille, for everything. I don’t trust many people, but I trust you with my world.”
“Loneliness is a liar,” Graham told me, sitting down on the edge of his bed as he spoke. “It’s toxic and deadly most of the time. It forces people to believe they are better off with the devil himself than being alone, because somehow being alone means a person failed. Somehow being alone means a person isn’t good enough. So, more often than not, the poison of loneliness seeps in and makes a person believe that any kind of attention must stand for love. Fake love that is built on a bed of loneliness will fail—I should know. I’ve been alone all my life.”
Lucy lowered her voice and whispered, “If you need to fall, fall into me.” Within seconds, gravity found me. Every sense of floating was gone, every sense of strength no longer mine. I began to descend, faster and faster, crashing down, waiting for the impact to hit, but she was there. She was right beside me. She caught me before I hit the ground. She became my strength when I could no longer be brave.
‘The world’s a little darker tonight, Graham.’ Then he wiped away his tears and said, ‘But still, I must believe that the sun will rise tomorrow.’”
We weren’t supposed to feel this way. We weren’t supposed to fall for one another, she and I. Yet it seemed gravity had a way of pulling us closer.
Loving Lucy Hope Palmer wasn’t a choice; it was my destiny.
“It’s you,” I whispered, our lips still slightly touching. “My greatest hope is, and always will be, you.”
“Truth?” I whispered. “Truth.” “I thought I’d been in love before. I thought I knew what love was. I thought I understood its curves, its angles, its shape. But then, I kissed you.” “And?” I swallowed hard. “And I realized you were the first and only thing that ever made my heartbeats come to life.”
“Did you just ask me on a date even though there was poop on my face?” He nodded without hesitation. “Of course. It’s just a little poop. That wouldn’t change the fact that I’m in love with you and want to take you out on a date.” “What? Wait. What? Say that again…” My heart was racing, my mind spinning. “I want to take you out a date?” “No. Before that.” “That it’s just a little poop?” I waved my hands. “No, no. The part after that. The part about—” “Me loving you?” There it was again. The racing heart and the spinning mind. “You’re in love with me?” “With every piece of my soul.”
I was the girl who felt everything, and in that moment, my whole world began to crumble. I held Talon against me and cried into her shirt as she kept speaking her random words. My eyes shut tight as I sobbed against the beautiful soul. This was where I had felt it for the first time. What it felt like to be happy. What it felt like to be loved.
A hand fell against my lower back, and I curved into Graham’s touch. He stood behind me, tall like the oak trees in the forest, and lowered his lips against my ear. As the words danced from his mouth and into my spirit, I remembered exactly why he was the man I chose to love fully. When he spoke, his words forever marked my soul as his. “If you need to fall, fall into me.”
held my daughter closer, as a reminder of why I’d have to rise in the morning, just like the sun.
“So this is our happily ever after?” I asked softly against his lips. “No, my love, this is merely our chapter one.”
