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She exhaled loudly. “I love you too. And seriously ...” Her tone softened. “I’m only hard on her because I’m a mama bear. You’re a good man, Brent. You deserve a good wife, not a drunk floozy—”
“She’s not a floozy, Mom—”
“I know, I know, but you know what I mean. She hurt you once. I don’t want you to have to live through that again. You deserve to be happy.”
“Thanks, Mom. Rain check on supper. Tell Sis I say hi.”
She said goodbye, and he hung up and stared at his phone. It made him feel loved that his mother was so protective of him, but she didn’t have the whole picture. Yes, Sammy had hurt him, but he had hurt her too.
He wasn’t the innocent victim here.
Chapter 25
Samantha was runninglate on Friday morning, but she still stopped at her favorite coffee shop.
“Good morning,” Stan said from the behind the counter. “The usual?”
“Yes, please.” She got her debit card out, but he waved her off. “You won’t need that this morning.”
She assumed that he meant that this one was on the house, and though he’d never done that before, she wasn’t too shocked. She did drop a lot of money there. “Wow, thanks, Stan!”
“Don’t thank me.” He spun around and handed her a large cup with writing all over it. “Someone stopped in and paid for one of these for every weekday for the rest of the year.” He smiled. “Merry Christmas, I guess. Or happy new year or something.”
She didn’t know what to say. “Wow, okay. Thanks.”
He waved and turned his attention to the next customer.
Samantha held the cup up in front of her eyes and spun it around slowly, reading the words. The handwriting was quite different than it had been on the car. Granted, writing with chalk was probably different than writing with a marker on a curved surface, but she had a feeling that Brent hadn’t written this himself. He’d probably just told Stan what to write.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
She had no idea what that meant, and she’d forgotten Cindy’s interpretation.
She knew it would make her late, but she waited till Stan had a break and then said, “Please tell me who did this.” She held up the cup in case he’d forgotten.
