AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He felt something stir deep inside. That forgotten feeling of being with his parents from before Cal’s death. The loss of his brother had shaken all of them and loners that they were, they’d all gone their separate ways, but maybe…
Don’t get your hopes up,he thought.
Or do,Cal’s voice echoed in his mind.Maybe for once hope for something and it will happen.
Since when did you get all optimistic?
Death.
He heard his brother’s laughter in his mind and smiled. Also he knew he was almost hopeful about Angelica. He liked her. He liked the way she cared and the empathy she’d shown him. He also liked her bluntness and her honesty. She could have made her viral video someone else’s fault but she’d owned her bad behavior. Even admitted she’d have acted the same way again.
He liked that.
Liked her.
He was trying not to scare her off and had agreed to this see-what-happens dating thing he was doing with her but a part of him knew, this couldn’t last. He was going to leave Whiskey River and maybe visit again when the project opened in The Barrels or when they broke ground on another area, but that was it.
He wasn’t going to suddenly pull up stakes and move to this small touristy town in the Hill Country.
And more importantly he knew Angelica wasn’t going to leave. She couldn’t. As much as she was a strong, independent woman, she was also so deeply tied to her family and the business she was building in this community.
He prided himself on his honesty, so it was time to look good and hard at why he was sleeping with her. He’d already said it was casual but this didn’t feel that way. He didn’t believe in love, had seen for himself that even parental love was an iffy prospect. While he did believe that both of his parents cared for him, he knew that when it came to love it was reserved for other people in his mom’s case or things in his father’s.
He poured himself two fingers of whiskey and downed it in one swallow. He definitely wasn’t going to let his mind go down that path. He packed a small leather bag with his essentials and they laid in his bed staring at the ceiling waiting for his alarm to go off in six damned hours.
Stupid time of night, he thought. He reached for his phone and texted Angelica. His intent was just to say thanks for listening to him, words he hadn’t been able to say when they were together.
She immediately texted back.Want to talk?
He did.
She video-called him and he propped his phone against the lamp on his bedside table. She wore a fuzzy-looking sweatshirt and had her hair braided.
“Hi.”
“Hello. So you can’t sleep either?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’ve turned into a bit of an insomniac over the last few years,” she admitted.
“I’ve been one since high school,” he admitted. “To be fair it was probably down to the Red Bull I chugged to study for exams.”
She smiled over at him. “My mom was a tyrant when it came to Red Bull, and she made me think I’d die if I drank one so I never did.”
“Well you won’t die but it’s probably good you never had one,” he said.
“Maybe. Do you have any sleep remedies?”
He shook his head. “I’ve tried them all and they don’t work for me. You?”
“Well, I…this is going to sound cheesy.”
“Nothing sounds odd at two a.m.,” he said.
She gave him a funny little smile. “You’re right.”
“So?”
“I count my blessings. I sort of had to do it when I lost the shop in New Orleans because…well it was easy to fall into ‘poor me’ thinking. So I made myself think of all the good things I had,” she said.
