Jesus! He’s like a ninja. I kinda feel like he’s the killer I want to be when I grow up.
He stops at the door and smirks. “Let’s not keep the ladies waiting.” He slips out the door and it closes silently behind him.
Almost like he wasn’t even there.
Taking a deep breath, I groan. “That is one scary motherfucker,” I mutter, reaching out to wash my hands.
And he’s scared of Fee? I can almost feel my balls crawling back up in my body. I need to make sure and keep my head for now. The last thing I need is a crazy cousin stalking me.
I’m still figuring out what’s going to happen with my life now that half of it is missing.
Sighing, I slip out the door and back down to the waiting couple.
And the woman I’ve never forgotten.
CHAPTER 5
Harper
My phone rings as soon as I slip inside my little cottage and drop my keys in the little carnival glass bowl that my mom left me when she passed away suddenly after I graduated.
I stroke the sides and my lips quirk. “Darius is back, mom. What do you think about that?”
There’s no reply but then again there never is. No matter how many times I talk to her.
But it makes me feel closer to her.
I toe off my sneakers and wander across my little living room in the dark. This old house holds all my memories.
My mom was a single mom when women didn’t want to be. She got herself messed up with a married man when she was on vacation and came home to find herself knocked up and no way to call the man she only knew as Curt.
She could have given me up but she wasn’t that kind of woman. She was tough and sweet and such a good mom. She worked for the police department for a lot of years in the dispatch. She worked long hours and it wasn’t a lot of pay but it was enough for her to be able to afford our little place. And we were able to scrape by with everything else. Not a lot left over.
That’s why when I started traveling after she passed away, when Darius didn’t even bother coming back for her funeral and my heart was shattered at the double shots.
Add to that, I found about him slipping up and getting his girlfriend pregnant and then a quickie wedding with a child on the way.
That was when I knew it was time for me to hit the road and try and forget all my pain. Forget the feel of his arms around me when we’d barely turned sixteen and he’d hug me tight while we watched stars in the bed of his old pickup truck.
The same one he packed her up in to leave for college.
That fucking hurt.
All those years traveling didn’t get rid of the pain. It just moved it to a back burner so that I could learn to function around it. Like learning to live without air.
Dropping onto the couch, I lean my head back and stare up at the ceiling.
I don’t understand what happened. I really thought he was going to ask me to the dance. I bought a new dress that my mom helped me pick out.
I ended up not going. I had no intention of sitting there alone all night and watching him dance with her.
My phone rings again and I sigh and pick up, knowing exactly who it’s gonna be.
“Why didn’t you pick up the first time? I know you were home. I tracked your phone.”
Huffing, I punch a pillow by my head. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop tracking me?”
“I don’t know why you’d bother telling me when you know I’m not gonna listen to you.”
