Wide Spaces (A Wide Awake Novella, Book 2)

  Copyright 2013 Shelly Crane

  All rights reserved

  This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved, including resale rights: you are not allowed to give or sell this book to anyone else.

  Any trademarks, service marks, product names or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if we use one of these terms.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Author and publisher does not have control and does not assume responsibility for third party websites and their content.

  Reference: Useless facts found in Uncle John's Monumental Reader, www.dbmproaudio.com/facts.html,and the world wide web

  Cover design by Okay Creations

  Editing services by Hollie Westring

  Printed in the USA

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  Paperback available, also in Kindle and E-book formats through Amazon, CreateSpace, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Apple, and Kobo and anywhere eBooks are sold.

  More information can be found at the author's website:

  http://shellycrane.blogspot.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1493505104

  ISBN-10: 1493505106

  Useless Facts

  1. Just like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.

  2. Every day, more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S. treasury.

  3. Only 24% of Americans do not have a tattoo.

  4. Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.

  5. In the course of an average lifetime you will, while sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders.

  6. Cherries will cause cancer cells to kill themselves.

  7. A teaspoon of honey is the life's work of 12 bees.

  8. Dolly Parton once anonymously entered a Dolly Parton look-alike contest…and lost to a drag queen.

  9. Studies show that 70% of people who marry their best friend stay married their entire lifetime.

  10. Diet Coke destroys tooth enamel as much as meth and crack cocaine.

  11. To remain in love for a lifetime : listen actively to your partner, ask questions, give answers, appreciate, stay attractive, include your partner, give him/her privacy, be honest and trustworthy, tell your mate what you need, accept his/her shortcomings as who they are, give respect in all things, never threaten to leave, say 'no' to adultery, and cultivate variety in your activities to keep things fresh. You can never say 'I love you' too many times and you should say it every day. Even though you've been together forever it seems, you should still continue to 'date' your mate and find new ways to fall in love with them every. Single. Day.

  Just like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.

  Mason

  It wasn't that I was scared, per se. It was that the man hated the guts in my belly, and Emma was his first daughter to get married, even though she was the youngest, and…well, the man hated my guts.

  Emma knew something was up. I'd purposely left the ring out in a hidden-but-not-really-hidden kind of way. I knew she'd seen it. Like a switch that was flipped she was different just like that. But when a couple days ticked by and I hadn't proposed, I could also see her disappointment. I hated that, but I had to ask her father for "permission" and I used that word lightly. Whether or not he agreed, I'd be marrying his daughter. I just wanted to use this last olive branch to hopefully toss off any doubt or contempt he held for me.

  His retirement party was today. Emma was being introduced to a million folks by her mom so I saw my opportunity and went for it. He must have known somehow or seen it on my face maybe, because he set his drink to the side, maintained eye contact with me my entire walk over, and excused himself from the group of people he was with.

  He ticked his head to the side when I reached him and said, "Let's talk in my office." Seriously ominous words.

  I sat down on his lush beige couch and he sat next to me. I figured I wouldn't beat around the bush or insult his intelligence with small talk. I pulled the ring from my pocket, opened the lid, and turned it for him to see.

  He took it easily and looked at it for an excruciatingly long time. Then he closed the lid, twirling it in his fingers. "You know, when I first met you and I saw how much passion and commitment you had for my daughter, I was thrilled. And now, as I look at your passion and commitment for my daughter, but in a completely different way, I have to admit that I felt unease at first."

  I nodded. "I know, sir."

  "Don't call me sir," he chided and sighed with a small smile. "You called me Rhett before you dated my daughter. The rules haven't changed. "

  "Yes, s…Rhett."

  We chuckled a little awkwardly. "It's not that I don't like you, Mason, I just-"

  "You think I can't provide for her," I stated.

  "It's not that either. Emma is a big girl and I trust her judgment on things. It's just…she wakes up, she doesn't remember us at all or want a whole lot to do with us, and then she takes one look at you and for whatever reason, she is completely latched onto you. We just wanted her back and then she…just wanted you."

  I swallowed that down. Dang, I thought they didn't like me because I was poor. "I mean, Isabella said…"

  "She said things because she was angry and because she grew up poor herself. She was angry with you, Mason, because we wanted our daughter back. That's all." He opened the box again and looked at the ring, his face blank giving nothing away. "But we had her all along. She still feels like that little girl who used to grab my coattails when I'd come in from work and ask me to make paper planes with her with my depositions." He chuckled. "I wasn't ready to let her go after just getting her back, and I'm still not."

  I felt all the breath leave me in a rush. I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it. "But Emma fits…with you. This whole world is different for her, and the way she looked at things, like a fish out of water, made me ache for her. But she seems to fit with you, and that makes her fit all the way around."

  He snapped the box closed and handed it to me slowly. "Even before, my daughter was a very happy girl. But there's a difference between happy because that's all you've known and being happy because you've learned to be grateful and that makes you really happy, now isn't there?"

  I waited, but he said nothing. "Yeah, there is."

  "You make her the grateful kind of happy, Mason. And she may not live here anymore, but I know you're not taking her from us. She'll always be my little girl," he stated and gave me a look to make sure I was listening.

  "Of course. I'm not trying to take her away. My mom's here; I wouldn't leave anyway."

  "We know." He pointed at the ring and smiled, just barely. "She's going to say yes. You know that."

  I nodded. I did know that. "I do."

  "Then you already know what I expect of you. She'll be yours just as Isabella is mine. I take care of my wife. I not only provide for her, because that's not the most important thing, but I love her today more than I loved her the first day. If I had my way, my daughter would spend some time relearning who she is." I almost interjected that she knew exactly who she was, but his speech continued. "But she tells me that she knows, and that she's ready to move on. I don't know if she'll ever get her memory back. Of course, I have hope for that, but I just don't know. Emma h
olds her own fate in her hands. If she wants to do this, I'm going to give you my blessing."

  All that for a yes. I sighed so loudly he had to have heard me. "Thanks, Rhett. I promise you don't have to worry."

  He stood, sighing. "I know. Mason, we know you. It just took us off guard is all. You helped us when we were so lost for what to do after Emma's accident. You stayed with us for months and helped us and Emma. You could have passed us off or just not cared because no one thought she was going to make it. But you always believed." He held out his hand. "You're already a son to us, Mason. Now it's official."

  I took his firm grip and felt a million pounds lighter.

  When we went back to the party, I wondered if Emma would be able to decipher the smile on my face. We came back to find her and her mom giggling loudly at something the mayor was saying. He was a boisterous man, a cigar hanging out of half of his mouth, and he was waving his arms wildly to go with the story he was telling.

  Em and her mom looked so much alike like that. Rhett and I stood and watched them for a while. Em was wearing a short yellow dress and little black high heels. Her hair was down. She looked amazing and happy. There was that word again.

  When they caught us gawking, they smiled. Her mom leaned over and whispered something, causing Em's smile to grow. I may have even seen a blush.

  Rhett walked over to Isabella and Emma came to me.

  "What was that about?" She looked back at her dad. He had the saddest smile on his face. She glanced back to me, curious. "Did something happen? Everything OK?"

  "Yeah," I replied and kissed her forehead. "All is well in the world."

  And now, as the freezing air sucked me out of my warm memory of that day, it was colder than I could remember it ever being.

  I looked down at my little Eskimo Emma and couldn't help but smirk at her as she tried to jam the carrot into the snowman's face. He was as tall as I was and she could barely reach.

  "Are you freaking kidding me?" she asked him. I snickered behind her. She turned to glare at me playfully. "You are absolutely no help, Mr. Wright."

  "I like watching you try." I slid my arms around her back.

  "You like watching my backside," she countered with her own smirk.

  "That's what I said."

  She laughed, her arms reaching around my neck. "Oh, my. What am I going to do with you?"

  "There's a list a mile long of things."

  She shook her head. "Tease. Are you going to be this mean when I'm your wife?"

  "Absolutely." She held up the carrot. "What?"

  "Fix him. Poor guy's miserable without all his appendages."

  I grinned and took it, moving to him, and she saw where I was headed. "Mason Wright, don't you dare!"

  "What?" I said innocently and moved toward the snowman's bottom half. "You said he needed all his appendages?"

  She laughed and hit my back. "Don't you dare!"

  At the last second of giving the snowman a heavy dose of pride, I changed course and stuck it in the spot for the nose. "I don't know what you were thinking, but I'm appalled if it was something dirty. It is almost Christmas."

  "You're such a scoundrel," she joked and hopped up on my back.

  "Now you can cross number eighteen off your list—A snowman that resembles Philip Seymour Hoffman. Check."

  She giggled hard. Her teeth chattered against my neck as she hung on. I reached up and touched her cheek. "You're freezing, baby."

  "Yes, I am. It's freaking freezing, Mr. Bigglesworth."

  I laughed as I started back toward the house. "Our movie marathons are doing you some justice."

  "Anyone who can't appreciate a good Austin Powers movie just isn't sane."

  I laughed some more as my boots crunched and drudged through the thick snow of the front yard. Christmas was just two days away. Our first Christmas together. The first Christmas that Emma could remember. The first Christmas our families would spend together. The last Christmas we'd have that Emma wasn't my wife.

  I put her feet to the porch when we reached it and we shook off the snow. Colorado certainly had its fair share of snow, but the hard, awful stuff usually stuck to the mountains. This year, we had snow almost every day since Halloween. My beater barely functioned on these kinds of months. But I never wanted Emma to worry about breaking down or being cold since the beater usually didn't heat up until you reached your destination. So, I sold the beater and leased a new model Dodge Ram truck outfitted with the best snow tires. There was no way she was freezing her tush off or getting stuck somewhere in all the snow. The house was paid off, but I still had lots of bills from mom's medical stuff.

  I had been marketing and getting jobs like crazy over the summer for my tattoo shop. It was time to take this up a notch if this was going to be my real-life business from now on. So, I put on my big boy pants, as Emma would say, and rented a small space up town. When business kicked into high gear, I hired someone to help. Jax pays me a booth rental fee every month and it makes it easier on me to know I'm getting that amount no matter what. It just so happened to cover the building rental every month, too.

  It all seemed to be working out so well.

  It even looked like we may be able to hire another guy because business was doing so well. The summer vacationers were very into getting a tattoo to remember their trip. Or regret them, either way. I thought it would slow up when winter hit, but it hadn't. There weren't really many tattoo shops around there and with the college being so close, it seemed I had cornered the market.

  For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could breathe. I felt like I wasn't being smashed and pressed, draining me of any and everything. For the first time, I felt like my life wasn't a testament to my guilt and shame. It was a testament to how love finds you in the strangest places, and hope clings to us in the nooks and crannies we never think to look.

  The gap between the man I used to be and the man I was now was a wide space that was filled with all the ways Emma had saved and changed me.

  I pulled her inside with me, the warm air making her groan with delight. I peeled off her hat and then her gloves and boots. I looked up at her from where I was crouched on the floor. "Better?"

  "It's not fair that we're both out there in the cold, but I'm the only one who almost freezes to death every time," she muttered.

  "I've got thick, manly blood," I rebutted.

  She shook her head at me, letting her coat fall from her arms and slinging it to hook on Mom's hall tree. I did the same and Emma wrapped her arms around my middle, nuzzling her ice-cold nose into my neck. Gah, she was freezing.

  "Since when did the Arctic take up residence in Colorado?" she griped.

  I rubbed her arms and back, warming her as best I could. She placed her hand on my chest next to her face. She stared at the ring on her finger with the small, private smile that was proudly reserved for me. The ring wasn't massive by any stretch, and she wasn't being vain in her gazing. She'd told me several times that she stared at it so it would be burned in her brain permanently and even if another coma claimed her, it wouldn't take the memory of me asking her to marry me away from her.

  She was thriving in her college classes, her family was blossoming before our eyes as they got to know their new daughter and vice versa. We had a date set. Emma and I both wanted nothing more than to have a small ceremony as soon as possible, but her parents being…her parents...wanted the big send-off they'd always planned for their daughter. Emma felt like she owed it to them to do it.

  I knew the day would come that she would forgive herself for being different, that she'd be able to feel like she was worthy of being loved by her parents. She wasn't taking someone else's life; she was taking back what was hers all along. It was a slow process, but it was happening—a cocoon setting the butterfly free when it's ready.

  I rubbed my thumb over her ring and down the length of her finger. "I love you, Em," I whispered into her hair.

  "I love you." She leaned back to look up at
me. She licked her lips before biting and gnawing on them. What was coming next always made my blood rise. That was her body's way of letting me know that she wanted to be kissed. I didn't wait for her to ask. I leaned in, licking my own cold lips to moisten and warm them for her before I settled onto her mouth.

  Gah, that mouth.

  She kissed like her life depended on it. She never played coy or teased. When she kissed me, it was with purpose. When she accepted my kiss, it was with everything she had. She was wide open. Our kissing was meaningful and all encompassing.

  I leaned her back a little, her eyelids fluttering. "Baby, you're freezing. Here."

  I took my jacket from the hook and wrapped it around her. "Thanks," she said softly. She looked at my neck and I could tell she was stalling. "Can I stay the night with you?" she asked slowly.

  I felt my brow dip. "What will your dad say?"

  "We're getting married on New Years," she replied and put her hand around my neck. "He'll say I'm an adult and about to be a married woman and I don't have to have Daddy's permission anymore." She grinned.

  "That's not exactly what I meant, Em."

  She sighed. "I know, but you've already gotten the man's blessing. You've got to stop worrying so much."

  "Yeah, and I don't want his blessing revoked."

  "I'll text Mom, tell her I'm staying over, and I'll see them tomorrow. She knows it's freaking cold out there and snowing like a mini-blizzard every five minutes."

  That familiar sensation of doubt crept up. "I just don't want them to regret—"

  "They won't. They don't." She pulled me closer with that hand behind my neck. "They see how happy I am because of you."

  I gulped and nodded, the wave that had been crashing over me, receding. I still fought the fact that I was nowhere near good enough for her, not even in the same ballpark. Changing years of thinking you're nothing but a bastard trying to make up for things…took some time.

  I sighed. She was right. Both of her parents had warmed up to me a lot. The day of her father's retirement party when I asked him not if I could marry her, because I was going to anyway, but if he would give us his blessing because I knew how much it meant to Emma, he said he was really surprised that I had come to ask him for it. That day he gave me his blessing to propose, and ever since then, he was different. He didn't spend so much time trying to avoid me and began to speak to me how he used to when I was Emma's physical therapist.