AllFreeNovel
Share Us
What am I supposed to do with that?
Wait and melt?
Waiting is not only hopeless, it’s idiotic.
It’s time for me to admit what a part of me has always known: Owen Larrabee and I have no future together.
We were always a mismatch. At odds. Polar opposites.
Being older doesn’t change that.
As if the universe can sense this shift in my thought process, my phone buzzes as I pull into my driveway and turn off the engine.
It’s a text from a number I don’t have saved in my phone.
Unknown Number
Hey Emmy, it’s Chad Rober. I read the article about the fire in the newspaper.
How are you holding up?
Okay, if this happened in a romance novel, the reader would give it a two-star review for using coincidence as a plot driver.
But this is not a novel. This is real life. My real life.
I blink at my phone. The text is still there.
Is this a sign? A sign that it’s time to move on? That I’m not destined to be the crazy Harvest Hollow cat lady at the end of the block that trick or treaters avoid?
As I stare at the phone in my hand, I think about the way Owen looked at me tonight during dinner.
There’s no way I want to get hurt again. Not like before.
I’ve been protecting myself by keeping myself out of relationships altogether, but maybe the right answer is to throw myself into a safer one.
One where there’s no danger of, you know, me falling in love.
Romance novel heroines do that all the time.
It doesn’t usually work, but I’m going to ignore that for now.
My thumbs hover over my phone screen, and I finally text back:
Emmy
Hey, Chad!
Thanks for asking. I’m doing okay now.
It was pretty scary.
Chad
Yeah, I bet
I can’t even imagine what it’s like to go through something like that.
Emmy
