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I tipped my chin to him in greeting. “What’s up?”
I hadn’t seen the man in over five years, and this is how he greets me?
He huffed a laugh before snarling. “You fucking shitting me?” he yelled again. Guess he wasn’t going to answer my question.
The woman flinched before she opened her mouth.
That’s when the lies began. That’s when the betrayal took over, seeping into the already damaged bond my brother and I shared, destroying it completely.
That’s when I lost my brother.
The woman I’d just fucked like a whore was my brother’s fiancé.
Chapter One
Valerie
Present Day
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Val, honey, I’m a grown woman,” my mother argued, as she sat on her bed. We were on FaceTime, the first of many, while I was on this business trip.
I was currently at Denver International Airport waiting on my rental car. The rental agency said they were limited on vehicles, so it would be an hour wait. Not wanting to wait in the lobby, I found a coffee shop, got out my laptop and AirPods, and called my mom. After that, it would be a quiet, three-hour drive to Hayden, Colorado.
“I know that Mom, but this is the longest business trip I’ve taken—”
“And I told you I would be fine. I don’t have treatment for another few days,” she explained, cutting me off while trying to reassure me. As much as she tried, nothing would stop me from worrying about her. She’s all that I have and if I lost her…I would have no one.
Mom had stage three lung cancer.
We found out a few years ago, right before I graduated college with a pointless degree and a ton of debt. I was home for Christmas when I found Mom passed out on the kitchen floor. After way too long in the hospital, we finally were given a diagnosis. At the time, the cancer was only at stage two and wasn’t as aggressive.
She was almost at stage four now. Her new treatment plan was expensive, and unfortunately, insurance barely covered the costs, resulting in me paying thousands of dollars a month in medical bills.
The plan—the original Valerie Cross Life Plan—was to become a lawyer, then open my own firm in Dallas. I planned on having a kickass, high-rise apartment and a dog. I hadn’t decided on the breed yet, but I would’ve gotten to that later. Included in that plan was falling in love with a sweet man, a kind man. One who wanted children, who wouldn’t leave when they entered the world.
I planned on having a big family. I wanted to eventually move out of said kickass, high-rise apartment and move to Rockwell, into a big, warm, loving home my husband and I would’ve built. I planned on having a chaotic house filled with messes and laughter, because I grew up in a quiet house, filled with longing and sadness.
I’m not saying my mother wasn’t a good mom. She was and is the best mother to me, her only child. My father—her high school sweetheart, the star quarterback—ran for the hills six months after I was born. My parents had a Friday Nights Lights love story and five years after graduation, that story came to an end. He told my mom he would see her after work. She told him that she was making his favorite for dinner, fried chicken. He gave her a kiss and walked out the door.
He never came back.
My mom thought he’d had been killed in a car accident or ran off the road. Hell, she even considered that he’d kidnapped by the next Jeffery Dahmer. She even filed a missing person’s report, and the whole community stepped up to help find him.
They found him.
One year, two months, and thirteen days later.
On a beach in Florida, with a woman on his arm. Photos were taken and the case was closed. David Nathanial Cross was alive and well, living his second life in Florida with some woman named Monica.
Fuck. Monica. Fuck. David.
After that discovery, my mom slipped into a deep depression. I was too young to remember it, but her neighbor, Allie, told me all about it when I was sixteen and hellbent on knowing my father. Allie Holden was my mom’s best friend of twenty-two years. She was living next door to us when my parents were still married, but six years ago, she got into a car accident. Killed by a drink driver.
Then it was just me and my mom again.
We made it, though. It was her and I against the world. She owned a flower shop in Greenville, Texas and was the one who made everyone corsages at my high school prom. She was a successful small business owner, so the news of her lung cancer shocked the community.
