Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 136507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
I can’t believe Emery McAllister is standing in front of me again.
I had to let go of so many things to survive prison. I had to let go of her. But all the promises and feelings long since buried are flooding back to me like a rapid river through a busted dam.
All those summers racing horses across these fields.
All those nights looking up at the stars.
She’s ten times more beautiful than I remember.
“I heard Holly yelling your name and I came running but …” Emery’s gaze flickers over my chest before diverting quickly to my face, as if catching herself. “I don’t know what they were thinking.”
“Music’s on. I didn’t hear anything.” And I’m pretty sure I can guess what Holly was thinking. “How old are they?”
“Sixteen. Well, actually, Holly’s still fifteen. Her birthday is next month.”
“Jesus.” I shake my head. Despite the fact that I’m in desperate need of feeling a hand on my dick that isn’t my own, I have zero interest in that need being met by anyone who can’t legally drink or vote.
“Holly’s a wild child. Anything she shouldn’t be doing, you can bet she’s doing, including flirting with older men.”
“You know they’re into the booze, right?”
“Oh, I do. I’ll find cans of Twisted Teas in the blue bin tomorrow morning.”
I have no idea what those are. Something sugary, if I had to guess. “And you’re okay with that?”
“It’s not that I’m okay with it, but they’re gonna do it, anyway. At least this way I can let them have a few while making sure they don’t chug ten coolers and pass out in a ditch or worse.” She snorts. “Clearly, I failed at that task tonight. The one with the red jacket is—”
“Isla.”
Surprise flickers across her face, but then it fades. “Right. Annie’s letters.” Emery seems pensive.
What is she wondering? What else I know about her life? Everything. My mother could moonlight as a professional archivist.
“She looks exactly like you,” I say.
“Really?” Her attention veers to her backyard, where the glow of flames from the firepit has suddenly vanished. “I’ve always seen more of her father in her.”
“For her sake, I hope not.” Would I recognize that dickhead? I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.
Her mouth curves with a tiny smile that she hides by reaching down to tuck her flannel pajama pants into her rubber boots. “I wasn’t planning on leaving my couch tonight.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Her eyes flash to my half-naked body again. My boxers have a tiny red moose pattern on them. “You should probably get back inside.” But she makes no move to leave, and neither do I, content to memorize this version of her so, when I’m lying in bed tonight, staring up at a ceiling that isn’t concrete for the first time in forever, it’s what I see.
“Who did you think it was?” Emery asks suddenly.
“Huh?”
“The wrench. You thought it was someone else down here, throwing a stone through your window.”
“Right.” I’ll bet her suspicious cop brain is always churning. “Someone angry that I’m out? No one specific. Definitely not a group of teenage girls wanting to invite me to hang.” I frown curiously. “Would you actually have had them arrested?”
“Yes,” she says without missing a beat.
My deep chuckle carries. It’s a foreign sound, even to me.
She cocks her head as she studies me. “Why is that funny?”
“I don’t know. Just seems wrong, given how many times your dad dropped Jay off in his cruiser at our front porch with nothing more than a warning.” I don’t think there was a mailbox within a five-mile radius of Cold River without dents in it, courtesy of my brother and his baseball bat.
“Yeah …” She falters, as if considering her next words. “He blamed himself for where you two ended up. He thought that maybe, if he hadn’t let Jay off so easily, things would have gone differently. He held on to that regret until the day he died.”
The bit of humor inside me fades. “It wasn’t Clive’s fault.” It wasn’t anyone’s but Jay’s and mine. “I’m sorry about your parents. I knew about it all when it happened. I …” My voice drifts. I wrote her a letter when her father died. To express my condolences. I reread it fifty times and then ripped it up, figuring a cop with a rising career wouldn’t appreciate letters stamped from prison. “I would have liked to have seen them again,” I say instead. Though maybe they wouldn’t have felt the same.
Emery’s gaze wanders upward to the window where the music carries through the broken glass. “How are you settling in?”
I shrug, leaning against the doorframe. “Hasn’t sunk in yet. It’ll take time.” That’s what everyone told me. Weeks, months, maybe longer. I’ve been warned about panic attacks and trust issues, how the peace outside can be as unsettling as the chaos I lived through on the inside, how spending twenty years being told what to do and when can wreak havoc on your ability to make decisions for yourself.