Time and Tide by Kristen Terrette

Author:Kristen Terrette [Terrette, Kristen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Inspirational Contemporary Romance
Publisher: The Hartwood Publishing Group
Published: 2017-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Sunday

Chad

Dang, she is beautiful, so, so beautiful. I stood in the door frame of the kitchen drinking my coffee, watching her sleep on my couch as the Keurig brewed a second cup. The smell of her fruity shampoo hitting my nose was what woke me. My eyes opened to find the sun up and the room bright already as I realized she was still tangled in my arms. A panic attack jumpstarted all my senses then, remembering what I’d told her, what I’d confessed, one of my dark secrets trapped inside. I’d even let some tears fall. No one had seen me cry, probably ever. I didn’t cry at my dad’s funeral and certainly not since my accident. Tears meant weakness, and I was trying to always be strong, to pretend I was okay.

The sounds from the coffeemaker stopped, and I went to it. I poured some French vanilla creamer into her cup just like I’d done to mine. I picked both up and eased into the family room. I sat them on the coffee table and sat down on it myself, a coffee table now cleaned of the alcohol which sat on it still when I woke up. It was poured down the drain and the empty bottle now in the trash.

I watched her, becoming the stalker she joked I could be. If she hadn’t come when she did last night, would I have given in and messed up my sobriety? Was her showing up a coincidence or luck or something else altogether? Even one sip could have ushered me back to the old Chad, the one who mixed drinks and drugs daily without a thought to who I could hurt. I’d been so wounded inside I’d used the substances to mask my pain. But to those around me…the ones who ever made it passed the surface-level Chad I was letting them see…their possible pain because of my addiction had never crossed my mind. I was that selfish.

The old man who’d saved my life, the man who’s van I’d pulled in front of, a perfect example of selflessness in a human, moved in front of me as I closed my eyes and the memory…the nightmare…or a mixture of both resurfaced.

I was at a red light, the last turn to get to Jeff’s road and the graduation party he was throwing. I was already way past gone, had been drinking and snorting all afternoon. I glanced down to see if I’d missed any call on my phone as I pushed the gas and turned left, but everything went black.

“Son!” A man called out to me from the darkness. “Son!”

A pounding and clicking sound repeated like a scratched cd.

“Son! Wake up!”

The pounding and clicking started again.

My brain told me the man, who seemed really far away, screaming for his son, was yelling at me. But I knew it wasn’t my dad. He was already dead, but he also never called me son.

“I’m trying to get the door open! Son! Wake up!”

I tried to force my eyes open, to wake myself up.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.