Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
“Coming to Texas for Labor Day?” Becca asks Colten as we take our seats for dinner.
“Can’t. Working.”
“Halloween?” She follows up with him.
“Working.”
“Thanksgiving?” She frowns.
He lifts a shoulder while dishing up casserole for Reagan. “I can put in for time off for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but not both.”
“Well, choose whichever one you can bring Reagan with you.”
“That might be neither.” He eyes his mom.
She gives him a slow nod and sad smile. He has no official custody of her. Whatever time he gets with his daughter is granted by her mom.
I can’t purge this one little thought from my head. It’s on a continuous loop.
Colten Mosley is a dad.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Want to go for a drive?” Colten asks as he makes his way down the stairs after reading Reagan a bedtime story.
“I should go. When your mom comes back downstairs, I’m going to tell her goodbye and head home.”
“She decided to take a shower because I told her we were going for a drive, and you’d say goodbye when we got back.”
I frown. “Pretty presumptuous of you.”
“Hopeful.” He grins.
“Colten …”
“Quick drive. We’ll be back in twenty minutes. It will take my mom that long to shower and get ready for bed.”
This is a terrible idea, but I find myself nodding.
With that winning smile that I’ve never been able to resist, he nods toward the door, opening it for me.
“This way.” He heads toward the garage while I head toward his car.
“I’m not riding on the back of your bicycle, Mosley.”
Colten chuckles. “You used to be more fun, Watts.” He digs his keys out of his pocket and opens the side access door.
As I step behind him, he flips on the light, causing my next step to falter. There’s a sunken floor and a car lift with a Corvette suspended in the air.
“Doesn’t look drivable.”
“Not yet.” He eyes me over his shoulder and smirks.
I follow him around the car, stopping in my tracks for a second time when I see a blue Chevelle. Not a blue Chevelle, my dad’s blue Chevelle. I don’t know this for certain, but my gut tells me it’s the same car, or maybe it’s the beaming expression on Colten’s face that leaks the truth.
“You bought my dad’s car? When? Why? How did I not know this?”
“He sold it to me when I went into the police academy after serving in the Marines.”
“You kept in touch with my dad after you enlisted?”
“Sure.”
Sure … he says it like it’s no big deal.
“Do you remember when your dad took us to homecoming our sophomore year in this car?”
I nod several times, ambling around the car, giving it a slow inspection.
“Remember when we left early?”
My gaze finds his over the top of the car. Colten grins. I do all I can to keep my face neutral.
“Under the bleachers?” He continues to ask questions that don’t need to be asked.
That’s it. No more eye contact for him. There’s nothing wrong with my memory, and he knows it.
“I’m trying hard to figure out,” he continues, “how we spent nine years together and seventeen apart, but I feel like my whole life has been defined more by those nine years than the following seventeen.” He shakes his head, running his hands through his hair. “You taught me so many things about life … about love. And I didn’t fully see those revelations until you were gone.”
“Well…” I release a nervous laugh “…no regrets. Right? Your words. I don’t recall saying those exact ones, so I didn’t have that big of an impact on your life.” I make my way around the car in the direction that will keep me the farthest from him. There’s no way I’m getting in that car with him. “I bet your mom is out of the shower. And it’s late …”
“And I could have taken a job anywhere, so could have you. Still here we are in the same city, working in professions that overlap on a regular basis. Really, Josie, what are the odds of that?” He catches up to me just as I reach the door.
His fingers slide around my wrist.
And just like that … I’m eighteen.
I can’t breathe.
The deafening thud of my heart makes it hard to focus on anything but how his touch didn’t age one bit. I’ve not acquired an ounce of immunity to it.
“Seventeen years, Josie …” he whispers. “You can’t stay mad at me for seventeen years.”
Wrong.
My grudge is the eternal kind.
On my headstone, they’ll write:
Josephine Watts
Mother of zero.
Loved by a few.
Friend to several.
Good with dead bodies.
Emotionally humiliated by Colten Mosley.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I say.
“I know the best parts of you.”
God … why does his warm touch feel so good? Oh, that’s right … dead bodies for a living.
I’m not going to forgive him. I’m sure as hell not going to forget what he did to me. But I might let his touch linger a few more seconds.