Bumping up the Numbers

Having gotten the latest chapter of "The Blue and the Gray" out and into the world, I find myself turning once again to my other active story, "Danger Close". I'm thinking that I can make some progress on that over the next couple of weeks, having finally gotten a critical character a bit more sorted out. Which is a good thing, because I seem to find myself rereading a lot of my own work these days. I'm not sure why exactly, maybe I'm still just a bit surprised that I was able to produce something like that. And no, I'm not saying it's the greatest thing out there, far from it. There are a lot of much better writers out there. But still, it kinda blows my mind sometimes. My only concern though is whether I'm inflating my numbers by doing so. I'm pretty sure that the site recognizes me and wouldn't count me as a new reader, but still I have questions, as I have seen my numbers go up when I construct stories on the site. How many other people have read my work? One wonders....