Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
I’ve always hated the way small towns like this lend no form of privacy. Your achievements are talked about just as loudly as your failures, and there’s never any shortage of conversation once people think two people are dating.
It probably would’ve been better to take Madison home last night rather than the hotel. I have no doubt the clerk, regardless that it wasn’t someone who I recognized, told no shortage of people that we got a room there. There’s no privacy in Lindell. There never has been and there never will be.
“What are you doing?” she asks, the first words spoken since we left the hotel.
“Going to go pick up the boys from Dad’s,” I tell her.
“You’re not going to take me home first?”
“It’s on the way.”
“And he’s going to know exactly what we did last night,” she argues. “Just tell him you picked me up from somewhere else.”
Heat and hatred for this imaginary person fills me to the top of my head, my ears growing hot just from thinking of it.
“I will not tell him you stayed with another man. He’d want to kill whoever it was for not making sure you got safely home.” Anger laces my words, but I’m finding myself incapable of controlling my feelings right now, which irritates me even more.
“Another man?” she scoffs. “I went out with Adalynn. You could say I stayed the night with her.”
“Adalynn would get you home.”
“Maybe I was still asleep when she left to open the bakery this morning?”
I shake my head. “I’m not going to argue with you, Madison. He won’t have a clue. He’s never been that observant.”
She huffs, irritated herself, but I ignore it as I turn onto one of the older streets in town.
My dad’s little two-bedroom house is the very one I grew up in. There’s no longer a rope swing in the front yard because of the storm that uprooted the tree when I was in high school, but the memories of my mom pushing me on it as a little boy remain.
The pain of losing her is like a wound that I don’t think will ever heal. I know it eats at my father as well. Neither of us were there to protect her that day. I was in Detroit, too busy with work and the boys to bother coming home that weekend for Kalen’s wedding. Dad was at the store because people rely on him to be open when he says he’ll be open.
“You okay?”
I look down at the warm palm resting on my forearm before giving her a soft smile.
I look out the window at my parents’ home. I haven’t spent much time here since coming back to Lindell. It hurts too much. I asked Dad about it once, wondering how he could face the emptiness, and he was quick to tell me it wasn’t empty to him. The walls were bursting with memories and her laughter. They had thirty-five amazing years together in this home, and being here only brings him peace.
“I miss her, too,” she says.
I nod, knowing if I tried to speak about my mother I’d probably embarrass myself with how emotional it’ll make me.
“Dad wants to sell the store, but I’m afraid if he does, he’ll end up coming home and never leaving again.”
I know he’s sad. I know a huge part of him, the best part, he’d argue, is gone.
“He wouldn’t do that,” she says, fully understanding my meaning.
We watch as the living room curtain flutters.
“And that’s why,” she says, pointing to the two little boys who come flying off the front porch.
The grin on my dad’s face is wider than I’ve seen in a long time as he steps out onto the porch, watching the boys run toward the driveway.
“Thank you,” I say, needing the reminder that my father does, in fact, have something to live for.
I reach for her hand, but she pulls it away before I can clasp it. She gives me one of those perfected smiles that doesn’t reach her eyes before opening the door and climbing out.
“Madison!” Cale yells as he flings himself into her arms.
She picks him up without missing a beat and hugs him to her. Cole waits his turn in front of her, not missing a beat to get a huge hug the second she puts Cale down.
“Daddy?” Cale asks, his face scrunched up. “Why are you wearing the same clothes from yesterday?”
Ignoring his question, I don’t bother looking back at Madison’s face as I take Cole’s hand, guiding him toward the house so we can collect their belongings. The last thing I need right now is more rejection.
Chapter 22
Madison
Things weren’t supposed to be weird. It wasn’t supposed to be awkward when we got back home. We agreed to it before we ever dove into each other. What we failed to remember, however, is that things were weird and awkward even before that.